Dr Roderick Bailey
I specialise in the study of the history of medicine. My principal areas of research are past outbreaks of infectious disease, the histories of surgery and wound management, and medicine’s relationship to war and conflict. My current projects include a major study, supported by the Royal Army Medical Corps Charity, of developments in blood transfusion during the Second World War.
In addition, I have an established research interest in the history of wartime and political movements of protest and resistance. My books include studies of British dealings with wartime resistance movements in Axis-occupied Albania (Wildest Province, Jonathan Cape 2008) and Fascist Italy (Target: Italy, Faber & Faber 2014). The first of these was based on research for my MPhil (Cambridge) and PhD (Edinburgh) and largely written while I was the Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, for 2000/01, while the second was a commissioned volume in the Cabinet Office’s official history series. My current interests in this area overlap with the study of health and medicine (e.g.: the challenges of healthcare provision in austere environments, and the mental health impacts of resistance and asymmetric warfare).
I came to Oxford in 2013 as a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in History. Before that, I completed my PhD in 2003 and was employed as a historian attached to the Imperial War Museum and Cabinet Office. I have also worked extensively for the European Union and OSCE as an official observer of international elections, principally in former conflict zones and communist states in Southeast Europe, Eastern Europe, and East Africa, and in 2011 served in Afghanistan as a mobilised British Army reservist. Since completing my Wellcome fellowship in 2016 I have taught at Oxford as a Departmental Lecturer in the History of Medicine and continued my studies as a research fellow supported by the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.
Publications
Selected imminent/recent publications:
‘Disease, DPs, and DDT: A Global Health Perspective on the History of Refugee Relief,’ Itinerario 46/2, 2022 (forthcoming)
‘Ends and Means: Typhus in Naples, 1943-44,’ Centaurus 64/1 (2022) pp.249-259
‘Commemoration, Veneration, Reflection: The Imperial War Museum and the Past’ in P Pirker and E Messner (eds.) Kriegen gehören ins Museum! Aber wie? (Vienna: Edition Atelier, 2021) pp.155-164
‘Special Operations: A Hidden Chapter in the Histories of Facial Surgery and Human Enhancement,’ Medical Humanities 46 (2020) pp.115-123
For full list, please see here:
https://www.hsmt.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-roderick-bailey
Other sites/info
Some recent YouTube content:
‘Photograph of a Greek Healthcare worker, Athens, 1945’. A contribution to a British School at Athens series (‘21 Objects for 21’) commemorating the bicentenary of the Greek Revolution.
Dr Roderick Bailey
I specialise in the study of the history of medicine. My principal areas of research are past outbreaks of infectious disease, the histories of surgery and wound management, and medicine’s relationship to war and conflict. My current projects include a major study, supported by the Royal Army Medical Corps Charity, of developments in blood transfusion during the Second World War.
In addition, I have an established research interest in the history of wartime and political movements of protest and resistance. My books include studies of British dealings with wartime resistance movements in Axis-occupied Albania (Wildest Province, Jonathan Cape 2008) and Fascist Italy (Target: Italy, Faber & Faber 2014). The first of these was based on research for my MPhil (Cambridge) and PhD (Edinburgh) and largely written while I was the Alistair Horne Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, for 2000/01, while the second was a commissioned volume in the Cabinet Office’s official history series. My current interests in this area overlap with the study of health and medicine (e.g.: the challenges of healthcare provision in austere environments, and the mental health impacts of resistance and asymmetric warfare).
I came to Oxford in 2013 as a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in History. Before that, I completed my PhD in 2003 and was employed as a historian attached to the Imperial War Museum and Cabinet Office. I have also worked extensively for the European Union and OSCE as an official observer of international elections, principally in former conflict zones and communist states in Southeast Europe, Eastern Europe, and East Africa, and in 2011 served in Afghanistan as a mobilised British Army reservist. Since completing my Wellcome fellowship in 2016 I have taught at Oxford as a Departmental Lecturer in the History of Medicine and continued my studies as a research fellow supported by the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities.
Publications
Selected imminent/recent publications:
‘Disease, DPs, and DDT: A Global Health Perspective on the History of Refugee Relief,’ Itinerario 46/2, 2022 (forthcoming)
‘Ends and Means: Typhus in Naples, 1943-44,’ Centaurus 64/1 (2022) pp.249-259
‘Commemoration, Veneration, Reflection: The Imperial War Museum and the Past’ in P Pirker and E Messner (eds.) Kriegen gehören ins Museum! Aber wie? (Vienna: Edition Atelier, 2021) pp.155-164
‘Special Operations: A Hidden Chapter in the Histories of Facial Surgery and Human Enhancement,’ Medical Humanities 46 (2020) pp.115-123
For full list, please see here:
https://www.hsmt.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-roderick-bailey
Other sites/info
Some recent YouTube content:
‘Photograph of a Greek Healthcare worker, Athens, 1945’. A contribution to a British School at Athens series (‘21 Objects for 21’) commemorating the bicentenary of the Greek Revolution.