I’ve had quite a few conversations with colleagues about the challenges and rewards of archival research. We’ve talked about the joy of discovering a letter or memo or perhaps a collection of photographs barely touched for decades, as well as … Continue reading
In The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Robert Burton refers to anger only as a mental perturbation, endorsing the much-quoted Horatian dictum that it is a short-lived form of madness and Areteus’s view that if it is excessive, it produces insanity. … Continue reading
Sarah Chaney is a PhD student at the UCL Centre for the History of Psychological Disciplines and co-organiser of the Damaging the Body seminar series. This post, about food, physical restraint, and Victorian psychiatric treatment, arises from one element of her PhD … Continue reading
In 1859 Charles Darwin, musing on the way insects transform their appearance to fit in with their surroundings, asked: “why, to the perplexity of naturalists, has Nature condescended to the tricks of the stage?” Yet nature condescends to theatrical tricks … Continue reading
I’ve been researching philosophy clubs and the phenomenon of grassroots philosophy for an academic project I’m running called Philosophical Communities. The research has taken me in many different, interesting directions: 18th century coffeehouses, 19th century radical Corresponding Societies, the Chautauqua … Continue reading
Here’s a long essay I wrote in the New Inquiry, a US magazine, about how governments are trying to solve the problem of happiness. It begins with a quote from Aldous Huxley’s preface to Brave New World: ‘ The most important … Continue reading
There’s a very interesting cover story and editorial in this week’s Times Educational Supplement, suggesting that the Department of Education under the Coalition government is in the process of quietly ditching New Labour’s flagship children’s policy, Every Child Matters (ECM). … Continue reading
One of the interesting things about the politics of well-being is how, in the UK, it began as a movement on the Left, through figures like Geoff Mulgan (the head of Blair’s policy unit), and Richard Layard, but then managed … Continue reading
The History of Emotions Blog was launched in May 2011, with this welcome message from Tiffany Watt-Smith and myself. Since then Tiffany has moved on to become a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, and we have been joined by Jules Evans … Continue reading
Thomas Dixon and I are working on an AHRC-funded project called Philosophical Communities, which examines the history and contemporary rise of philosophy groups, clubs and associations. The Independent mentions the project in this piece today on the rise of philosophy … Continue reading