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Current Graduate Research

Eliane Lieder

My name is Eliane, and I hold a Bachelor’s degree in History and Theology (with a major in Catholic Theology) from the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany.

Currently, I am pursuing a Master’s degree in History, focusing on the legal frameworks and judicial reasoning behind medieval and early modern German witch trials and witch hunts. This perspective provides a unique lens for understanding the phenomenon of witch persecution from a legal and institutional standpoint, offering new insights beyond the conventional socio-religious narratives. In order to better understand the legal and regional specifics of early modern witch trials, I work with archival sources from various German cities. As part of my research, I will be conducting archival work in Germany, particularly in the State Archives of Stuttgart and Hamburg, which contain trial records and legal documents from local courts and church institutions.

 

Sarah Milligan

Sarah Milligan is a thesis-based Master student here at ��������. Working alongside her supervisors, Dr. Monica Mattfeld and Dr. Dana Wessell Lightfoot, Sarah’s thesis implements literary, gender, and sexual history to navigate the relationship between sexual idealism, expectation, and the hierarchal values of sex workers in the eighteenth-century London metropolis. Sarah particularly uses a literary source titled Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, a document meant to advertise prostitutes by publicizing their name, location, anecdotes about them, and sometimes their price.

 

Sarah navigates this curious source through three chapters: the first chapter navigates the historical importance of Harris’s List and how outside perspectives, laws, and ideals influenced such a text. Chapter two navigates how the authors of the List marketed such women and how such advertising underlined themes of expectation and attraction. The final chapter takes the personification of the prostitutes and places them into their geographical location—concluding that the authors of Harris’s List clarify the blurred boundaries of brothel-esque spaces and guide their readers to the ‘best’ places to engage in prostitution. Ultimately, Sarah attempts to answer the question, “what makes a perfect prostitute?”

 

Drew Grosse Mulock

Hello, my name is Drew Grosse Mulock. I am currently writing my MA History thesis on the Deinstitutionalization of Mental Health Care in British Columbia from the 1950s to the 1980s. I have always been intrigued by the history of medicine and psychiatry and how they intersect with people and society. I aim to produce a social and intellectual history that examines and addresses the challenges that individuals, practitioners, and policy makers faced in their efforts to erase stigma from our society and in their attempts to enable their “disabled” citizens prior to the rise of community healthcare during the latter half of the twentieth century.

 

The purpose of this project is to promote a greater understanding of where our current treatment practices, pharmacology, and mental health legislation come from and what political, socio-economic, and cultural factors shape the stigma and support individuals and communities in BC face with mental health. I hope this research can contribute to the discourse of other scholars on matters of health and mental illness and inspire others as to the merits of scholarship on the history of mental health while stressing the need for including patient stories and experiences that are often neglected when conducting medical history.