Research Spotlight: Dr Andrew Seaton

What is your role and what does it involve?

I am a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the History Department. This is a three-year postdoctoral position (supported by the Leverhulme Trust) that allows me to undertake research for a new project. I joined the History Department last October and I've since been busy visiting archives, getting on top of a lot of secondary scholarship, and attending conferences in the UK and the US. This term, I'm teaching a class I designed that draws on this research. It explores the history of environment and health in Britain and its empire since 1800, so I'm excited to hear what students think.

Tell us about your research.

In broad terms, I am a British historian who writes about medicine, environment, politics, and social history. I am particularly interested in situating institutions (like the NHS) or historical developments (like industrialisation/ deindustrialisation) that are often considered in a strictly national or top-down way within a wider lens. My first book, Our NHS: A History of Britain's Best-Loved Institution, combines a range of perspectives that include planners in Whitehall, Sri Lankan doctors arriving in Britain, and new mothers on maternity wards. Through such an approach, I explore questions of periodisation (meaning, the concepts and names we give to distinct chunks of time in the past), how political change was understood on a cultural and experiential level, and the contested relationship between the state, experts, and ordinary people. 

What inspired you to write your book, “Our NHS: A History of Britain's Best-Loved Institution”?

I had two main sources of inspiration in writing this book, which began as a doctoral dissertation in the U.S. The first came about through my family. Before she retired, my mum was a cleaner in the NHS and two of her sisters were nurses. So, like many other people in Britain, I grew up with a familial relationship to this institution that made me want to understand its past. The second came from watching the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games, where the NHS featured centrally in how Britain projected itself to the world. It made me start thinking about why the health service came to assume such significance in public life and, moreover, why it had survived to do so when other parts of the universal welfare state established after 1945 did not. 

What do you find most interesting or enjoyable about your work?

I am privileged that there are many things I enjoy about my work. Luckily for a historian, I love going to lots of archives to find sources. Some of these archives may be unglamorous local record offices on the edge of industrial estates, but I still get a buzz from ordering a folder and reading about people's lives in the past. I like academic community - talking with colleagues about their research and learning from their own expertise. Relatedly, I enjoy sharing my research with other audiences, whether students, journalists and policymakers, or members of the public.

What working achievement or initiative are you most proud of?

My undergraduate degree. I experienced homelessness as a teenager and I was the first in my family to go to university, where (at Oxford) I numbered among the one per cent of students who had previously qualified for free school meals. Throughout my career, including at UCL, I volunteer with 'access' initiatives to encourage students from underrepresented backgrounds to apply to university. 

What's next on the research horizon for you?

As part of my Leverhulme Fellowship, I am writing a new book provisionally called The Ends of Coal. This book builds on my training in medical and environmental history and explores coal's impacts and legacies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Whereas existing histories typically map a 'rise and fall' of coal, I follow the lesser-known ‘ends’ of coal, interrogating its longer-term consequences for the landscape, health and population, the emergence of environmentalism, as well as empire and decolonisation. 

Can you share some interesting work that you read about recently?

This week, I visited the Grant Museum of Zoology at UCL for the first time. I'm planning to take my class this term on a field trip. It's a fantastic museum that anyone can visit, with incredible (and often weird) items in their collection. On my visit, I learned that the curators have been doing important work in recent years on the museum's ties to the histories of imperialism and eugenics. 

What would it surprise people to know about you?

I've never drank a full cup of coffee (I can't stand the taste!).

Links

• UCL historian shortlisted for prestigious Wolfson Prize 2024
• Dr Andrew Seaton's academic profile 
• UCL History 

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