Based at the University of Helsinki, the project examines pain as an embodied experience in the Anglo-American world between 1600 and 1900. Due to the methodological challenges posed by past experiences, previous research has mainly examined historical pain as a cultural and social construction rather than an individual, pre-cognitive experience. This project aims to resolve these challenges by combining tools from micro- and gender history and history of science with affect theory. Analysing pain as affective, the project will question the traditional body-mind dualism forwarded by previous scholarship in history of pain, while making a substantial methodological contribution to history of experiences. Examining autobiographical as well as medical source material, the project unearths the experiences of previously underexamined groups, including women, children, the poor, and minorities. This will help to deconstruct present-day inequalities in knowledge about and treatment of pain.

2022

2026