Wellcome Trust Studentship Funds Research on the History of Intellectual Disability
Wellcome Trust Studentship funds research on the history of intellectual disability
Simon Jarrett, a MA History of Ideas student in Birkbeck’s Department of History, Classics and Archaeology, has been awarded a Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities Studentship for his PhD thesis, entitled ‘The road to Dr Down’s idiot asylum: the creation of the idea of intellectual disability c. 1700-1867’.
Simon’s thesis will look at how ideas about people we would describe today as having learning or intellectual disabilities changed during the long eighteenth century, when they were known as ‘idiots’. At the beginning of the eighteenth century most ‘idiots’ lived in the heart of their communities, many had work of some sort and were supported by strong networks of families, friends and workmates. By the 1860s it was widely accepted that they should live in isolated asylum institutions under medical supervision.
Simon will be trying to understand what changed in people’s minds to allow this radical transformation to happen. He is interested in how people thought and talked about ‘idiots’ as well as how they talked about themselves, and how this changed over time. His research will look at sources such as joke-books, slang dictionaries, anthropology records, trial records and depictions in art and literature as well as more conventional archives.
Simon said: “I am absolutely delighted to have won the Wellcome Trust Medical Humanities scholarship which will enable me to concentrate on my research full-time. I am also very lucky to have Professor Joanna Bourke as my supervisor. Her distinguished work on ‘what it means to be human’ will be an important influence on my work.
“I have spent my career working with people with learning disabilities and, having supported people to come out of ‘asylums’ in the 1990s, I have always been fascinated by the lives people led and how they were perceived in their communities before the advent of the institution, which I think holds important lessons for today. I am just completing my MA in the History of Ideas and am delighted to be staying at Birkbeck, which I have found a fantastic environment for study and learning.”
Professor Miriam Zukas, Executive Dean of the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy, said: “Competition for these scholarships is fierce and so we extend our warmest congratulations to Simon on his award. We look forward to welcoming him back this autumn, this time as a doctoral student.”