Christine Hallett becomes first UK Chair in Nursing History

The RCN History of Nursing Society is delighted with the award of the first Chair in Nursing History to Dr Christine Hallett. This not only honours an internationally renowned academic and researcher, but also highlights how nursing history as an academic discipline has developed and moved forward in the UK.

The Centre for the History of Nursing and Midwifery at Manchester University, under Christine’s direction, has been instrumental in achieving this recognition and we look forward to hearing more about their work in the years ahead.

With an increasing number of nurses across the UK studying and researching nursing history at undergraduate, masters and doctoral level, it is clear that there are interesting and rewarding career opportunities associated with this field. One of the questions often posed by nurses concerns how they may develop a career in nursing history.  Christine’s own journey from newly qualified nurse to Professor of Nursing History offers some interesting insights into the hard work and commitment needed to succeed

Christine’s own history

Our readers will therefore be interested to know that Christine qualified as a Bachelor of Nursing, registered general nurse, health visitor and district nurse in July 1985. She then spent four years in practice before returning to academia in 1989 as a research assistant, eventually taking up a post as Lecturer in Nursing at the University of Manchester in 1992.

Since then, Christine has pursued a traditional academic career, her work consisting of a mix of research, teaching and administration. Having acquired a BA in History (first class) in 1993, she went on to gain PhDs in both nursing and history. Her nursing work focused on the implementation of Project 2000 in the 1990s (University of Manchester, 1995) while her historical work explored understandings of puerperal fever in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (University of Manchester, 2002).

At the UK Centre

In 2004, the founders of the UK Centre for the History of Nursing approached Christine and invited her to become the Centre’s new Director. In June of that year, the Centre, now the UK Centre for the History of Nursing and Midwifery, relocated to Manchester, where it continues to be a thriving enterprise. Today the Centre offers a range of services from PhD supervision to workshops and conferences, and an important website with links to other research centres throughout the world (www.nursing.manchester.ac.uk/ukchnm).

Christine’s scholarly work in the history of nursing ranges from studies of occupational health nursing and the implementation of early nursing degrees to significant contributions to methodology in the field. Her most recent work focused on nursing during the First World War and was published in 2009 as Containing trauma: nursing work in the First World War. She has also authored a work of popular outreach: Celebrating nurses: a visual history, published by Fil Rouge Press in 2010.