Daniel Ewers

Profile

My doctoral research examines appeals to scientific authority within advertisements for foodstuffs in British popular culture, 1930-1980 and how health, scientific authority, and nutrition intersect within these sources. Working collaboratively between the University of Leeds and the History of Advertising Trust, my project asks how advertisements appealed to the authority of scientists, doctors, and nutrition experts and how ‘good health’ was packaged and sold to consumers. I am particularly interested in how both the gender and age of consumers was conceptualised within these advertisements and how the concept of ‘health’ was constructed, deployed, and negotiated by these sources.

I began my research at the University of Warwick, where I studied for a BA in History (with Year Abroad), undertaking a year abroad in 2015-16 studying at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Following the completion of my undergraduate studies, I was awarded the University of Warwick Taught Masters Scholarship alongside a second scholarship from the University of Warwick’s Centre for the History of Medicine to continue my studies at masters level, graduating with an MA in the History of Medicine in 2018. My MA dissertation examined representations of ‘hermaphrodite’ bodies in eighteenth-century anatomical texts and how appeals by anatomists to the sight, touch, and ‘imagined dissection’ of the living body within their illustrations to these texts, underpinned a wider trend in diagnostic approaches to the ambiguously-sexed body during this period.

I joined the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science in October 2020 with a Collaborative Doctoral Award scholarship from the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH) to conduct my doctoral studies under the supervision of Professor James Stark and Dr Adrian Wilson at the University of Leeds and Alistair Moir at the History of Advertising Trust.

Research interests

I have broad research experience and interests in the history of medicine, science, gender, and visual culture from the eighteenth century to the present day. I am particularly interested in socio-cultural histories of health, especially in how health interacts with visual and popular culture, alongside a longstanding interest in the histories of LGBTQ+ peoples and cultures. My current (and previous) research interests include:

• History of Visual Culture
• History of the Body
• History of Food and Nutrition
• History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
• Histories of Sex, Sexuality, and Gender
• History of Consumer and Popular Culture

Qualifications

• MA History of Medicine, University of Warwick (2017-2018)
• BA (Hons) History (with Year Abroad), University of Warwick (2013-2017)

Research groups and institutes

• History and Philosophy of Science
• Centre for History and Philosophy of Science