Previous events

This talk celebrates the 27 nurses added to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) for the 2020 Year of the Nurse.

Hear from a group of nurses and historians who wrote the new entries for the ODNB, a joint project between the RCN and the UK Association for the History Nursing (UKAHN).

This event was originally held online in June 2020.

This talk was held for the 100th anniversary of nursing registration, in November 2019.

RCN President Anne Marie Rafferty and Helen Pankhurst, great-granddaughter of suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst, explained why the introduction of nursing registration in 1919 was an important time for nursing activism and women's rights.

Did you hear Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu on Radio 4's Desert Island Discs?

Here's our very own version held at the RCN back in October 2016. In an interview with Wendy Irwin, Elizabeth tells us more fascinating stories about her life, shares more music, and even a bit of dancing too.

Apologies, for rights reasons we have removed the music from this video.

In May 2018 we had the pleasure of hosting the book launch of The Language of Kindness by Christie Watson.

In this interview Christie talks about the inspirations for her book, what nursing means to her and takes a look round the RCN Library and Heritage Centre.

The film was made by the book's publisher Vintage, Penguin Random House. The Language of Kindness is available to buy now.

Annual History of Nursing Society lecture    March 2018

For this annual lecture, Professor Joanna Bourke spoke about her research into the history of sexual violence. 

In this short interview clip, she gives us an introduction to this research and talks about the history of the nursing role in caring for victims of rape.

LGBT history and mental health nursing      

For LGBT History Month in 2016, and as part of our mental health nursing seminar series, Tommy Dickinson spoke about the men who were institutionalised in British mental hospitals to receive 'treatment' for homosexuality and transvestism. 

In this interview he talks about his research and the experiences of the nurses who supported this practice.

Nurse and spoken word artist Molly Case commemorates First World War nurses.

Molly's poem is inspired by the First World War nursing scrapbooks held in the RCN archive. You can now browse these scrapbooks online, thanks to our HLF funded Service Scrapbooks project.  

This film was made at the Imperial War Museum, London, as part of their #WomensWork100 project.

In 2017 we launched our exhibitions and events series celebrating diversity in nursing.

As part of that series Deaf poet Richard D France came to the RCN to tell people about his experiences of being a Deaf person in the mental health system.

Richard is introduced here by Deaf Advisor Herbert Klein. This event was in BSL with live subtitles.