Dr Hannah Blythe

Profile

Hannah Blythe is a historian and health humanities researcher with a background in policy and public affairs. Her research focuses on mental health, psychiatry, psychology, charity, and the National Health Service. At Leeds, she works on the Constructing Moral Babies project, using interdisciplinary methods to explore the history and policy of the infant mind.

Before joining Leeds, Hannah was a Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she researched the role of charity in the British National Health Service. Before that, she completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge, with an affiliation at the Birkbeck Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health. Her PhD examines the history of Britain's first community mental health charities, 1879-1939, with a focus on their approaches to recovery from mental illness and their roles in the birth of British psychotherapy. She has also worked in policy and public affairs in the charity sector, local government and UK Parliament.

Research interests

History and health humanities; mental health; psychology; health charity; health policy; National Health Service; early life and infanthood; psychiatry; psychotherapy; public health; modern British history; parternship between academics, clinicians and policymakers.

Recorvery and rehabilation in mental health: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/hhsa/38/5

Infant psychology: Constructing Moral Babies: https://wellcome.org/research-funding/funding-portfolio/funded-grants/constructing-moral-babies-science-infancy

Charity and Briain’s National Health Service (NHS): Border Crossings: https://charityandthenhs.glasgow.ac.uk/

Moving images and public health audiences: The Public’s Health: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/bfi-collaboration-the-publics-health

Qualifications

• PhD History, University of Cambridge
• MA Health Humanities, University College London
• BA History, University of Durham