In September 2022, Vesna Curlic will begin the final year of her PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral thesis considers interactions between the history of medicine and the history of global migration to Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries. Edinburgh, with a rich medical history and good access to archival material, felt like the right place for her to pursue a PhD. In addition to support from the CCSF, her research has been supported by the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council’s doctoral fellowship and by the University of Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology.
Vesna’s research is based on a wide variety of archival material scattered around Britain, concerning a group of marginalised people – immigrants and refugees – whose stories are largely buried in the historical record. Her research has enabled her to draw out wonderful personal stories and ‘lived experiences’ of people overcoming obstacles encountered in trying to settle in a new land. She has particularly examined key sites of medical interaction on immigrants’ daily lives – the port, the home, and medical institutions – where migrants have faced encounters with the power of various mediators. Migrant lives were highly monitored and regulated by the state and by civil society at the turn of the 20th century, with fascinating parallels to present-day migration.
After the restrictions imposed by the Coronavirus lockdowns, in-person archival visits are once again possible, which has allowed Vesna to pursue some innovative avenues of research. In 2022, she has presented papers at two academic historical conferences in Swansea and Belfast where she discussed findings from her own research with a wider audience. She has recently published entries in a forthcoming academic encyclopaedia about London’s East End.
She was pleased to complete an internship at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Data, Culture, and Society which involved digitising archival material to make it more accessible and training others in key principles of digital history. Vesna is particularly passionate about projects that explore the capabilities of digital history and its ability to change the way one looks at history. In 2021, she also undertook an internship at the Institute for Historical Research, mapping histories of Jewish communities in London onto a digital historical map, focusing on familiar locations and uncovering unexpected sites of Jewish history.
Starting the final year of the PhD, Vesna is thinking about what paths she might follow after the degree is granted. Her internships and other work experience and the research skills she has gained during the PhD have prepared her for a variety of careers. Her current research at the University of Edinburgh will, however, offer British and Canadian policymakers a new framework for approaching modern refugee crises, one which embraces humanity and emotions at the forefront of decision making.
Vesna was awarded the Mary LeMessurier Award for the Study of History 2022 – 2023
