Dr Rebecca Wynter’s work cuts across disciplines and between the academic and public space, attracting well over £800,000 in funding and featuring in a variety of museums, publications and other venues. Equally at home in scholarly, heritage, and community surroundings, she is passionate about public history and the value of the Humanities to intellectual and creative life, to the public good, and to shepherding us through the modern world.

Dr Wynter has a range of teaching experience and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is an elected member of the Royal Historical Society and the Executive Committee of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, which appointed her as the Roy Porter Prize Chair. She is editor of the learned interdisciplinary journal, Quaker Studies. Rebecca is a founder member of the Mental Health Humanities initiative at the University of Birmingham (UK), and co-ordinator of Pulse Health and Medical Humanities Network in The Netherlands.

Rebecca is currently working on the project, ‘Policing Mental Disorder in London and Amsterdam since 1945’ at the University of Amsterdam. The project is an especially timely one, with police in both the UK and the NL (and globally) reflecting on their praxis. The aim of the project is to ascertain how we arrived at this point and suggest where we might go from here. In particular, it seeks to address how institutional attitudes towards mental illness have affected the experiences of people and police officers who have had mental health issues and their willingness to seek help.

The research for this project and that on ‘Understanding Mental Health Past and Present’, Wellcome-commissioned research into the historical theories around the causes of mental ill health, builds on a range of previous projects. Most recently work on historic incidents of ‘aversion therapy’ used for sexual reorientation (usually on men who had sex with men) at the University of Birmingham in the 1960s and 1970s has surfaced how institutions can, inadvertently or otherwise, endorse problematic attitudes. The work resulted in a report and an apology from the University, policy change and reflections by other organisations. Prior to that, she co-designed and was named researcher on the AHRC-funded project, “Forged by Fire’: burns injury and identity in Britain, c.1800-2000’, a unique collaboration between medical historians at the University of Birmingham, urban historians at Leeds Beckett University, and freelance artists, writers, and teachers. Research around first aid and first responders was directly informed by her work on the Friends Ambulance Unit during the First and Second World Wars, which was inspired by her Centenary activities with Central England Quakers.

Having also held research and visiting scholar positions at the Universities of Manchester and Strathclyde, and Worcestershire World War 100, since 2012 Rebecca has had a sustained connection with Quaker in Britain and Woodbrooke, where she continues to teach and supervise postgraduate Quaker Studies students.

Interested in collaborating, developing a project or grant, or hiring for freelance research and historical consultation? Contact Rebecca here.