Programme
Thursday 18 September
Venue: Grant Room, 3.11, Michael Sadler Building, University of Leeds
10am Registration
10.20am Welcome and introductions
10.30-12pm Session 1: Birth, government and population
Chair: Stuart Murray (University of Leeds)
Iona McCleery (University of Leeds): Fertility and infant mortality in fifteenth-century royal families: patterns of inbreeding?
Andrea Major (University of Leeds): 'His Manner of Getting into the World': Debating Childbirth, Maternity and Mortality in Colonial India
Chris Renwick (University of York): Voluntary and Involuntary Parenthood: Population Thinking, Eugenics, and the Welfare State in 1930s Britain
12-1pm Lunch
1-2.30pm Session 2: Birth and medicine
Chair: Anyaa Anim-Addo (University of Leeds)
Alex Bamji (University of Leeds): Childbirth, midwives and neonatal mortality in Venice, c. 1600-1797
Shane Doyle (University of Leeds): Birth outcomes in twentieth-century East Africa
Will Jackson (University of Leeds): Mutating babies: child rescue and racial instability in 1920s Cape Town
2.30pm Coffee
3-4.30pm Session 3: Birth, identity and community
Chair - Adrian Wilson (University of Leeds)
Sarah Fox (University of Manchester): ‘The Woman was a Stranger’: childbirth and community in the long eighteenth century
Angela Davis (University of Warwick): The role of the Jewish community in maternal and child health provision in Palestine under the British Mandate
Laura King (University of Leeds): The impact of birth on men: becoming a father in Britain, 1950s to the present
5pm
Public lecture, in association with History & Policy Parenting Forum
Venue: Conference Auditorium, University of Leeds
Simon Szreter (University of Cambridge): Births and the collective provision of welfare – the long view c.1550-2014
6.30 Drinks reception
Friday 19 September
Venue: Grant Room, 3.11, Michael Sadler Building, University of Leeds
9-10.30am Session 4: Birth in the public eye and the press
Chair: Jessica Meyer (Leeds)
Will Gould (University of Leeds): The demography of Hindu revivalism: Fertility, birth rates and the census in late colonial India
Adrian Bingham (University of Sheffield): ‘Letting in some daylight?’ The popular press and sex education in twentieth-century Britain
Kate Gronow and Andrew Murphy (Leeds student interns, reporting back from a collaborative project with the Thackray Museum): Childbirth and risk on display
10.30am Coffee, with a handling session led by museum curator Lauren Ryall-Stockton, featuring objects from the Thackray Medical Museum
11.15-12.45pm Session 5: Birth and personal experience
Chair - Iona McCleery (University of Leeds)
Leah Astbury (University of Cambridge): Delivered: After Birth Experiences in Seventeenth-Century England
Karen Harvey (University of Sheffield): Personal pain and social conflict: the experience of Mary Toft in 1726
Linda Fairley (De Partu): Experiences of forty years as a midwife
12.45pm Lunch
1.30-2.30pm Round table: The politics of procreation
Chair: Shane Doyle (University of Leeds)
2.30-3.30pm
Keynote lecture
Kate Fisher (Exeter): The Sex and History Project: Using historical objects in sex education classes
All images courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London.