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Overview

Dr Coreen McGuire

Assistant Professor


Affiliations
AffiliationTelephone
Assistant Professor in the Department of History

Biography

Coreen McGuire is a historian of interwar Britain doing interdisciplinary research at the nexus between disability history, medical history, and science and technology studies. She completed her PhD on the measurement of hearing loss in the British Telephone System at the University of Leeds in the Centre for History and Philosophy of Science. Following this, she took up a postdoctoral position at the University of Bristol and developed research on the historical measurement of respiratory disability as part of the Life of Breath project, a Wellcome funded project which was led jointly by Bristol and Durham.

Her first book, Measuring difference, numbering normal: setting the standards for disability in the inter-war period (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020) is available open-access. Described in (Twentieth Century British History, 2021) as rendering 'visible the long implicit but underexplored connections between biometrics and disability’ (Twentieth Century British History, 2021). It has been internationally praised as: a 'valuable contribution to a vibrant discussion at the intersection of STS and disability studies' (Social History of Medicine, 2020) and a ‘remarkable work [that] can be considered an essential read for any historian and philosopher of science and technology, as well as for those interested in disability studies’ (Canadian Review of Medical History

She (alongside Professor Alex Broadbent) leads The Measurement Lab; part of the new Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities (DRP-MH) that will be hosted by the IMH from September 2023 to the end of August 2030. She is a Fellow of the Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Public Health, leading on the Measurement Theme. She is co-editor with Dr Joe Martin of The British Journal for the History of Science book reviews section and can be contacted in this capacity at reviews.editor@bshs.org.uk 

Dr McGuire welcomes requests for research supervision. 

Publications

Authored book

Book review

Chapter in book

Journal Article