Our committee
Claire Chatterton (Chair) 
Claire Chatterton is a long-standing member of the RCN History of Nursing Society and has been its Chair since 2012. She trained as a general nurse at The London Hospital and as a mental health nurse in Oxford. After working in a variety of practice settings she became a lecturer and is currently working at the Open University as a staff tutor in the Faculty of Health and Social Care, based in their Manchester centre. She studied history at Oxford Brookes University and undertook a PhD at the University of Salford, in which she focused on the development of mental health nursing. She also indulges her passion for history by volunteering at Erddig Hall as an education volunteer and room guide for the National Trust and as a tour guide at Chester Cathedral.
Rosemary Cook (Regional contact – RCN in Yorkshire & the Humber Region; Membership consultation lead)
Rosemary Cook qualified as a nurse in 1980 and was a practice nurse and primary care manager in two health authorities before being appointed as nursing officer for primary care at the Department of Health. Rosemary led the working time directive programme at the Modernisation Agency and was director of the Queen’s Nursing Institute from January 2005. She became chief executive of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine in 2012. Rosemary became a CBE for services to nursing and health care in 2008, she also holds an Honorary Doctorate from Manchester Metropolitan University, and was visiting professor of Enterprise at Northumbria University from 2008–11.
Ruth Davies (Nation contact – RCN in Wales; Newsletter editor; Lead for Monica Baly Awards)
Ruth Davies has a professional background in children’s nursing and health visiting. She entered higher education in 1992 where she taught across a range of educational programmes in nursing and medicine at Cardiff University. In 2004 she became senior lecturer in child health at Swansea University. Ruth has been a member of the RCN History of Nursing Society since 2007 and organised the fourth annual RCN History of Nursing Society conference at Swansea University entitled Nursing public health and welfare. Ruth was acting chair 2010–11 and will continue as editor of the society’s newsletter. Her interests are in the history of children’s nursing and palliative care.
Christine Hallett (Regional contact – RCN in the North West; Link with UKAHN)
Christine Hallett is professor of nursing history at the University of Manchester. She is a qualified nurse and health visitor, and holds degrees and PhDs in both nursing and history. Her most recent research examines the work and identity of nurses who cared for the casualties of the First World War. Her book, Containing trauma: nursing work in the First World War (Manchester University Press, 2009) gained positive reviews from both nurses and historians, and her work of popular outreach, Celebrating nurses (Fil Rouge Press, 2010) gained a large worldwide readership. Professor Hallett holds fellowships of both the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Society for the Arts.
Alison O’Donnell (National contact – RCN in Scotland; Membership recruitment lead)
Alison O’Donnell is currently a lecturer in nursing with the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, UK. She qualified as a nurse in 1980 and had various posts working in the NHS, before undertaking a clinical teaching course at Queen Margaret University College in 1985. She undertook a BA in Education at the University of Stirling after this and also completed a diploma in nurse education in 1992 at Stirling. Alison gained her PhD in April 2010 from the University of Dundee. Her thesis considered the role that some nurses adopted during the euthanasia programmes in National Socialist Germany. In 1999 she was awarded a Monica Baly Bursary which enabled her to extend her scholarship of the holocaust and nursing by consulting archival sources in the USA. In 2002 she was awarded a Carnegie Trust Travel Award which enabled her to visit the Hilde Steppe Archive in Frankfurt, the Hadamar Asylum, and the Ravensbrück Concentration Camp and Museum in Berlin, in 2004.
Dianne Yarwood (Deputy chair; Events co-ordinator)
Dianne Yarwood is a retired nurse educationalist, most recently associate dean at City University London in the then St Bartholomew School of Nursing & Midwifery. She qualified as a general nurse in 1968 in Cardiff, but spent the rest of her career working in various London hospitals and schools of nursing, including Guy’s, Charing Cross and The Royal London. Over the years she studied biological and behavioural sciences at degree and masters levels, but throughout that time was an amateur, but enthusiastic historian, having first studied the history of nursing as part of the London University Diploma in Nursing in the 1970s. Dianne has been an RCN member since she was a student during the 1960s and has been a member of the RCN History of Nursing Society since its inception. She is currently secretary of the London & South East history of nursing group and is actively involved in an oral history project for the Charing Cross Hospital Nurses League.
John Adams (Regional contact – RCN in the East Midland & Eastern Regions; Website co-ordinator)
John Adams lectures in nursing at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridgeshire and has a particular interest in the history of “cinderella services”, such as poor law and early orthopaedic nursing. After completing a PhD study of Fulbourn Hospital, Cambridge, using oral history and documentary sources, he is now working on a history of recent developments in mental health care across the UK.