Maud Belair
Thesis title: Identity, Environment, and Policy: Intersected Spaces of Poverty and Hunger in Nineteenth-Century Britain and Ireland
PhD in History
- School of History, Classics and Archaeology
Contact details
- Email: maud.belair@ed.ac.uk
Background
I am a second-year PhD candidate whose research primarily focuses on the history of poverty and its lived experience in nineteenth-century England, Ireland, and Scotland. My work focuses on food aid, the spaces it was offered in, and their barriers to access. Moreover, my research analyses how public perceptions of poverty were shaped alongside the popularization of slum literature, investigative journalism, and changing understandings of health, medicine, and science. Ultimately, my work aims to further understand how our responses to poverty result from of socially-constructed conceptions of labour, morality, charity, and power. In addition to my research, I am a contributing writer for Synapsis: A Health Humanities Journal, and co-convener of the Irish History Reading Group.