School of Social and Political Science

Background

Dr Jenny Bangham is a Lecturer in the History of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. She uses historical approaches to understand the politics, administration, emotions, and authority of the biomedical sciences. Her first project traced the surprising connections between blood transfusion and the development of human genetics, and is published as Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics (Chicago, 2020), winner of the History of Science Society's 2022 Suzanne J. Levinson Prize. Jenny runs a Wellcome-funded project to recover how clinical genetics has been shaped by the disciplinary and gender politics of the NHS, disability rights, racial politics, and debates about the ethics of genetic testing. She is developing a new project to chart the history of ‘rarity’ in biomedicine.

Jenny co-edited, with Xan Chacko and Judy Kaplan, the volume Invisible Labour in Modern Science (Rowman and Littlefield 2022), a 30-chapter collection of short (teaching friendly) historical articles addressing how people and practices are concealed, eclipsed, or anonymised in scientific and medical research. 

Jenny co-convenes the pre-honours undergraduate course History of Medicine, and Sociology and Anthropology of Medicine (an intercalated programme for medical students). She is a member of the Social and Political Science EDI Committee. She also co-convenes with colleagues in History and STIS the History of Science and Medicine in Edinburgh (HoSMEd) Network.