Dr Sarah Marks
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Overview
Overview
Biography
Sarah Marks works across History and the Social Sciences to examine mental health, medicine and the sciences in the modern and contemporary world, in transnational context. She also researches the lived experience of mental ill-health and its treatment, collaborating with qualitative researchers and anthropologists. She was awarded her PhD from UCL in 2015, and held a research fellowship at the University of Cambridge before joining Birkbeck in October 2016, initially as a Wellcome-funded postdoctoral researcher, then as a Lecturer in Modern History and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow from 2019, and Senior Lecturer from 2021. She is the founding Director of the Birkbeck Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health. She also serves as an Academic Governor on the Birkbeck Governing Body (2023-26).
Sarah is an Editor for the interdisciplinary journal History of the Human Sciences and an advisory board member for the Czech Journal of Contemporary History/Časopis Soudobé dějiny. Her research has been taken up by the WHO Regional Office in Europe, BBC Radio, and The Wellcome.
Qualifications
- PhD History of Medicine, UCL, 2015
- MA History of Medicine, UCL, 2009
- MRes East European Studies, UCL, 2008
- BA History, UCL, 2006
Administrative responsibilities
- Co-Director, MA Medical Humanities
- History lead for UBEL ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership
- Academic Governor, 2023-26
- Member of Research Committee for School of Historical Studies
Visiting posts
- Honorary Research Associate, UCL School of European Languages, Cultures & Societies,
Professional activities
External reviewer for the European Research Council, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic Panel for History and Archaeology; the Austrian Science Fund (FWF); and the Polish National Science Centre (NCN).
Member of Expert Review Group for Wellcome Trust Humanities and Social Sciences Early Career Schemes (2021)
Member of Peer Review College for UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship scheme
Professional memberships
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Member of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies
Member of the Society for Social History of Medicine
Honours and awards
- Public Engagement Award for Collaboration 2019 (with Daniel Pick, the Hidden Persuaders Project and the Derek Jarman Lab), Birkbeck, University of London,
- Women's Forum Article Prize 2017, British Association of Slavonic & East European Studies,
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Research
Research
Research interests
- History of Science and Medicine
- Interdisciplinary Mental Health Studies
- Science and Technology Studies
- Central and Eastern Europe
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Britain
- Phenomenology
Research overview
Research grants:
UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship 'Cognitive Behavioural Therapies: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives'
Global Challenges Research Fund Grant 'Oral Histories of Community Mental Health in Ghana'
PUBLICATIONS
Journal articles
(with Daniel Pick & Mary-Clare Hallsworth) 'Hidden Persuaders on Film: Exploring Young People's Lived Experience through Visual Essays', Research for All, 5:2 (2021)
‘Suggestion, Persuasion and Work: Psychotherapy in Communist Europe’, European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, 20:1 (2018)
'Psychotherapy in Europe', History of the Human Sciences, 31:4 (2018)
‘The Romani Minority, Coercive Sterilizations, and Languages of Denial in the Czech Lands’, History Workshop Journal, 84:1 (2017), pp. 128-148
‘Psychotherapy in Historical Perspective’, History of the Human Sciences, vol. 30:2 (2017), pp. 3-16
‘From Experimental Psychosis to Resolving Traumatic Pasts: Psychedelic Research in Communist Czechoslovakia, 1954-1974’ Cahiers du monde russe, 56 (2015), pp. 53-75
Book
Mat Savelli and Sarah Marks (eds) Psychiatry in Communist Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015).
Guest-Edited Journal Special Issues
‘Psychotherapy in Europe’, Special issue of History of the Human Sciences, vol. 31:4 (2018)
‘Psychotherapy in Historical Perspective’, Special issue of History of the Human Sciences, vol. 30:2 (2017)
Book Chapters
‘A History of the Talking Cure’ in David Jones (ed.) Understanding Mental Health and Counselling. (OUP, 2020).
(co-authored with Mat Savelli and Melissa Ricci) ‘The Long (or Short) History of Mental Health.’ in Mat Savelli, James Gillett and Gavin J. Andrews (eds) An Introduction to Mental Health and Illness. (OUP, 2020).
‘What difference has the opening of the archives since 1991 made to the historiography of Communism and the Cold War?’ In Jessica Reinisch and David Brydan (eds) Researching and Teaching Twentieth Century History. (The Historical Association, 2020)
(co-authored with Mat Savelli) 'Communist Europe and Transnational Psychiatry' in Mat Savelli and Sarah Marks (eds) Psychiatry in Communist Europe (Palgrave, 2015)
'Ecology, Humanism and Mental Health in Communist Czechoslovakia' in Mat Savelli and Sarah Marks (eds) Psychiatry in Communist Europe (Palgrave, 2015)
'Psychologists as Therapists: Behavioural Traditions' in John Hal
Research projects
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Supervision and teaching
Supervision and teaching
Supervision
Completed PhD Students
Dr Sasha Bergstrom-Katz ‘On Intelligence Tests: Psychological Objects and their Subjects’ (Birkbeck, 2023)
Dr Hannah Blythe 'The use of interpersonal relationships to treat and understand madness in Britain’s first community-based mental health charities, 1879-1939' (University of Cambridge, 2023)
Current PhD Students
Mary Heffernan 'Psychoanalysis and Ireland, 1911-1998' (School of Historical Studies, Birkbeck, co-supervised with Sean Brady)
Rebecca Hudson 'Pathology and penal risk prediction: investigating the construction of personality disorder and decisions on captivity in British prisons' (School of Social Sciences, Birkbeck, co-supervised with Rachael Dobson)
Janina Klement 'Mapping Critical Psychiatry: A Transnational Study of Critical Psychiatry’s Reception in Western Europe and the US since 1965' (UCL School of European Languages, Cultures & Societies, co-supervised with Sonu Shamdasani)
Rebecca Klette 'Nordic Decay: The reception and application of degeneration theory and the concept of atavism in Scandinavian psychiatry, criminology, and eugenics, 1880-1922' (School of Historical Studies, Birkbeck, co-supervised with Carmen Mangion)
Jon Thurston 'The Myth of the Therapeutic' (School of Social Sciences, Birkbeck co-supervised with Paul Turnbull)
Kiara Wickremasinghe, 'Innovation in Psychiatric Crisis Care: an Investigation into Peer-Supported Open Dialogue in Inner London' (Bloomsbury Doctoral Partnership, SOAS Department of Anthropology & Sociology, co-supervised with David Mosse)
Keiran Wilson, '(Anti-)Therapeutic jurisprudence: Queer narratives of power and control under The Mental Health Act' (School of Social Sciences, Birkbeck, co-supervised with Sarah Lamble)
Teaching
Teaching modules
- Critical Entanglements and Methods in the Medical Humanities (SSHC483S7)
- Dissertation in Medical Humanities (SSHC485D7)
- Epidemics and Pandemics in History (Level 6) (SSHC570S6)
- Crossing Borders (SSSS001S3)
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Business and community
Business and community
I have media training.
Media
I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:
- History of mental health, psychiatry and psychotherapy - 19th C to the present
- Science and Medicine in the Cold War
- History of Czechoslovakia and Eastern Europe under Communism
Outreach
Understanding the Causes of Mental Distress: Wellcome Trust Consultancy
Sarah is currently leading a commissioned project for the Wellcome Trust Mental Health Strategy Team on the causes of mental ill-health, past and present, facilitating an aspect of the Wellcome's field-building work. This will enable us to better understand how different aetiologies have been generated, their contexts, longevity, and some of the current debates around them within mental health science and the lived experience community. A report on diverse perspectives on the causes of mental ill health was delivered to Wellcome in Summer 2023. Three articles are currently under peer review, and an interactive website timeline and pop-up exhibition will be launched in January 2024.
This project includes collaboration with researchers, lived experience advocates, artists, designers, clinicians and members of the Wellcome's Mental Health Strategy Team, and will run to 2028.
Psychotechne: Assessment, Testing, Categorisation
In Spring 2023 Sarah collaborated with artists Sasha Bergstrom-Katz and Tomas Percival to curate an exhibition, 'Psychotechne' at the Birkbeck Peltz Gallery, with a parallel events programme. This led to an engagement workshop with of learning disability self-advocates from My Life My Choice, Sunderland People First and the UEL Rix Inclusive Research Group. Read more in Community Living Magazine.
Hidden Persuaders Outreach with North London Schools and Freud Museum London
Sarah collaborated with Professor Daniel Pick and the Hidden Persuaders research group, Birkbeck’s Derek Jarman Lab, the Freud Museum, and north London schools on a public engagement project with funding from the Wellcome Trust from 2017-2019. This led to an exhibition, Wunderblock, led by artist Emma Smith; and a series of filmmaking workshops and screenings on ideas about brainwashing and hidden persuasion in history, science and culture. The participatory short films made by our young participants are available to watch here.
Media contributions
Sky TV History 'Strangest Things' Season 2
BBC Radio 4 'D for Diagnosis: What's in a Name'
BBC Radio 3 'Free Thinking: Are We Being Manipulated?'
BBC Radio 4 'Archive on 4: Dictators on the Couch'