Dr. Elisabeth M. Yang

Profile

Ph.D. Rutgers University

M.A. Durham University

M.A. Biola University

B.A. Barnard College, Columbia University

CELTA: Certificate of English Language Teaching to Adults University of Cambridge

Research interests

I am an interdisciplinary scholar who draws from history and philosophy of science and medicine, medical humanities, childhood studies, theology, and material culture.

An Early Career Award Recipient (2023-2027) of Wellcome, one of the largest and most prestigious independent biomedical research charities in the world, I am the Principal Investigator of a Medical Humanities project, “Constructing Moral Babies: The ‘Science’ of Infancy in Nineteenth-Century America and Britain.” My current research and teaching explore questions of how babies or infants (children aged 0-2) were conceptualized and treated as moral and spiritual agents within medical and scientific discourses and spaces during the long nineteenth century (1780s-1920s). When tracing the history of the “moral baby” in Victorian-era America and Britain, I investigate how theology, medicine, philosophy and politics entangle, clash, and collate with one another in the minds of those who imagine and aim to “construct” and treat the idealised “happy and healthy baby.”

Professional memberships

• Royal Historical Society
• Child, Law and Policy Network
• History of Science Society
• American Association for the History of Medicine
• Society for the Social History of Medicine
• British Society for the History of Science
• Children's History Society UK
• European Society for the History of Human Sciences

Student education

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Research groups and institutes

• Centre for Medical Humanities
• Centre for History and Philosophy of Science
• Centres and groups
• History and Philosophy of Science
• Medical Humanities Research Group
• Health Histories