Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Martin Moore

As of April 2014, I am an Associate Research Fellow in the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter. My staff page is: <http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/history/staff/martinmoore/> and I may be contacted on martin.moore@exeter.ac.uk.

Academic Profile

2010 - 2014 PhD, History, University of Warwick

2009-2010 MA in the History of Medicine (Distinction), University of Warwick

2006-2009 BA (Hons) History (1st Class), University of Warwick

Publications

2011 - Did You See?, Diversity in Health and Care, 8:3, pp.191-192.

Posts, Awards and Nominations

2012 - ESRC Internship: Justice Analytical Services, Scottish Government (June-October)

2012 - Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (Postgraduate): Finalist

2011-2012 - Seminar Tutor, 1st-Year Undergraduate Core Module - Making of the Modern World.

2011-2012 - Author, Industry and Parliamentary Trust Policy Event Reports (Health)

Research Overview

A Question of Control?: Managing Professionals and Populations in Type-II Diabetes, 1948-1992

Keywords: Chronic disease management, history of type-II diabetes, disciplined medical profession, bureaucratic technologies, biography of care, managerialism.

My dissertation examined the evolution of British diabetes management over the over the course of the twentieth century. It argued that through a series of technological, political, institutional and epistemological changes, British diabetes management came to centre on the bureaucratic discipline of professional medical labour by the early 1990s. That is to say that, by the end of the period discussed, medical professionals and state bodies united in heralding care protocol, guidelines and audit systems as the best means to improve the quality of medical care, and, through improved risk management, to improve national health outcomes by extension. Despite simultaneously being applied to other forms of medical practice, the key characteristics of chronic diseases (as defined during the 1960s and 1970s) meant chronic disease control formed a central testing-ground for these new techniques of medical management.

In undertaking such a study, I looked to do more than simply add a new perspective to the growing literature on the history of diabetes. Instead, I expanded current understandings of the history of twentieth-century chronic disease control strategies in Britain, and historicised and reformulated existing literature on the emergence of clinical governance-style mechanisms for managing British medicine. In bringing these literatures and perspectives together, therefore, I was able to gain new insight onto the multiplicity of approaches taken to public health in the twentieth century (here detailing how public health was pursued through management of professionals and clinics after the 1970s), and to see structured and reviewed medical care as gradually emerging from changing professional and political activities. As a condition seen from the mid-century onwards as a model chronic disease, diabetes mellitus provided an excellent lens through which to read these histories. The history of its management and prevention, moreover, will only grow in importance over the coming decades as prevalence rates for the condition itself continue to rise into the twenty-first century.

I am currently preparing this material for submission as a manuscript.

Funding

Economic and Social Research Council 1+3 Award (2009-2013)

Previous Research


'Lands of Opportunity: (Post)Colonial Networks and the Dark Continents of Diabetes'

My previous research - performed for my MA dissertation - examined the legacy of colonialism on British biomedical science as it operated across the former Empire. Using British supported investigations of diabetes mellitus in colonial and post-colonial territories as a case study, I explored the material and conceptual longue durée of British overseas research structures. I argued that the networks of institutions, personnel and funding that supported diabetes research in these territories during the colonial period came through the processes of decolonization relatively unscathed, and lasted well into the 1980s. This institutional stability, I suggested, both produced, and was produced by, a conceptual apparatus in which British-supported researchers constructed postcolonial bodies as racialized opportunities for useful knowledge construction. In tracing these continuities, I sought to contribute to the growing field of the history of postcolonial medicine in two ways. Firstly, by suggesting that moving the historical gaze to forms of biomedical activity besides healthcare and international public health might reveal a different perspective on medicine in colonial and postcolonial territories than that deployed at present. Secondly, following Roberta Bivins, by proposing that Britain might itself be a site of postcolonialism that deserves scholarly attention.

I have recently rewritten this piece and submitted it for publication.

Personal Development

Selected Conference and Seminar Papers

December 2012: "Administering Care: Bureaucratic Technologies in British Diabetes Management, A Biography", Illness Histories and Approaches Workshop, King's College London.

June 2012: "A Decolonising Discourse?: An Overview of History and Postcolonial Studies", Postcolonial Studies Symposium, University of Warwick.

March 2012: "A Disease For General Practice: Diabetes and the Locales of Chronicity, 1948-1992", Manchester CHSTM Lunchtime Seminar Series 2011-2012, University of Manchester.

September 2011: "This is the sort of health services research we need more of: Evidence and Bureaucratic Medicine in a Government Pilot Scheme, 1977-1985", Sick of Being Sick Workshop, University of Oxford.(Powerpoint Presentation)

June 2011: "Chronically Intriguing: Type-II Diabetes in Britain, 1948-1990", 2nd Annual Postgraduate Summit for the History of Medicine, Queen Mary, University of London.

January 2011: "Lands of Opportunity: Diabetes in the Caribbean, A Case Study", BSHS Postgraduate Conference, University of Manchester.(Powerpoint Presentation)

Events Organized

February 2011 - January 2012: Organizing Committee, British Society for the History of Science Postgraduate Conference, University of Warwick.

January 2010 - January 2011: Co-Convenor, History of Medicine Reading Group, University of Warwick.

May 2010-July 2011: Organizing Committee, 1st Annual Postgraduate Forum for the History of Medicine Summit, University of Warwick

Memberships