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)

Undergraduate teaching

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

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

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

No

Research summary

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

My thesis explores the Chinese diaspora in nineteenth and twentieth-century Britain through the lens of smells and odours. It argues that anti-Chinese sentiment became deeply ingrained in every sense, primarily through odorous descriptions that positioned the ‘Oriental’ as a site of moral contagion and a threat to white predominance. It examines how a tangible, identifiable ‘Chinese’ aroma became injected into a multicultural space.

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-Convenor, 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]

This article was published on