Gemma McLean-Carr

Thesis title: Odourising the Chinese ‘Other’: Smell and British Perceptions of China and ‘Chinatowns’, 1842-1946

Biography

Qualifications

MSc Contemporary History, University of Edinburgh (2022-2023)

PhD History, University of Edinburgh (2023-present)

Responsibilities & affiliations

  • History Guaranteed Hours Tutor Representative
  • Edinburgh Asian Histories Graduate Network Convenor 
  • BACS Member/BPCS Member
  • Smell Studies Graduate Network member 

Undergraduate teaching

I have previously tutored on the following courses within the School of History, Classics and Archaeology: 

  • The Historian's Toolkit
  • The History of Edinburgh: From Din Eidyn to Festival City
  • HCA Writing Centre

Research summary

Provisional Title: Odourising the Chinese ‘other’: Smell and British Perceptions of China and ‘Chinatowns’, 1842-1946

My thesis explores how odours and linguistic markers of smell have been used as tools of exclusion and inclusion, and how cultural assumptions about diasporic groups influence olfactory experiences. My research examines how odours shaped perceptions and narratives of the Chinese diaspora in nineteenth- and twentieth-century London.

Taking specific 'methods' of perceiving odours - such as how we locate odours or how we criminalise and gender smells - my research questions the implications of smells as a non-visual means of othering. Drawing on a case study of London's Chinatown (Limehouse), my thesis suggests that when race is not explicitly visible, the potency of odours becomes a tool to render difference ‘visible’

Current research interests

Sino-British Relations; Histories of the Senses; Smell Studies; Histories of Race and the Senses; Migration: History of Diaspora

Project activity

  • ECGH Asian Histories Graduate Network [Co-Founder, September 2024-present]
  • Edinburgh Centre for Global History: Graduate Workshop [Co-Convenor, 2024-2025]
  • Smell Studies Graduate Network [Member, 2022-present]

Xuelei Huang and Gemma McLean-Carr, “China through the European nose,” Encyclopedia of Smell History and Heritage,  https://encyclopedia.odeuropa.eu/items/show/37. [2024]

Papers delivered

  • 'Seeing Stench: National Identity and Odour in Eighteenth- And Nineteenth-Century Scotland,' Emotions and Scottish History Conference, University of Edinburgh, 22nd July 2025.
  • ‘Offensive Stenches and Western Noses: Olfactory Prejudice and Experience in London's Chinatown,’ Lancaster Historical Postgraduate Conference (LHPC), University of Lancaster, 25th-27th June 2025
  • “A thousand separate stenches:” Olfactory Sinophobia in Twentieth-Century Limehouse,’ Sensory Public History conference, University College London, 31st May 2025.
  • ‘Sniffing China from the West: The Role of Olfactory Prejudice in Shaping Mobility and Diaspora,’ British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies Conference, University of Glasgow, 23rd May 2025.
  • "A mysterious, soft and oppressive odour:” Sniffing Racial Difference between China and its Diaspora through Opium, c.1860- c.1930,’ International History of East Asia Research Seminar, University of Oxford, 21st May 2025.
  • 'Odourising the Chinese ‘other’: Smell and British Perceptions of China and "Chinatowns'" 1842-1946,' Edinburgh Centre for Global History Graduate Workshop, 26th March 2025
  • “That same languid smell:” Olfaction and the Chinese diaspora in London,’ University of Edinburgh, Graduate Conference, May 2024.
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