Paige Donaghy
Supported by the University of Glasgow Library
Dr Paige Donaghy is a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Melbourne who studies histories of reproduction, medicine and sexuality in Europe and Australia. Paige’s scholarship combines historical methods with approaches from gender studies, science and technology studies and sociology to produce innovative health histories. She has previously published in Journal for the History of Sexuality, Social History of Medicine, and Isis. Her monographs include Pregnant Women’s Sexuality in Early Modern England (Palgrave, 2025) and Mola, False Conception and False Pregnancy in British Medicine, 1550–1850 (Durham University, 2026). She is an ECR convenor of the Reproductive Justice Hallmark and Deputy Director of the Medical Humanities Lab at The University of Melbourne.
Paige is currently working on a history of obstetric violence in the United Kingdom, particularly England and Scotland, from 1700-1885. Obstetric violence is a form of gendered violence experienced by pregnant and birthing people, particularly women, during pre- and post-natal medical care provided in the hospital, clinic or home. Recent scholarship has explored how obstetric violence and obstetric racism manifested historically, but there has been little research in the UK context. Drawing on historical studies of domestic and sexual violence, combined with the history of medicine, Paige’s project aims to explore how the framework of ‘obstetric violence’ can help us unpack historical ideas about harmful and violent midwifery and obstetric care.
“I am delighted to receive a Visiting Research Fellowship from the University of Glasgow. This fellowship will provide crucial research support for my project on the history of obstetric violence. In particular it will allow me to study key Scottish obstetricians’ medical archives, as well as records from the Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital.
These materials are invaluable for this project, because of the sizeable influence that Scottish obstetric knowledge had upon the practice of midwifery and obstetric care across the UK, and the world more broadly. Moreover, studying hospital records is important to this project’s efforts to understand women patients’ experiences of obstetric violence.
As an early career researcher, this Fellowship provides important resources to visit and study the Glasgow University Library collections. This will ultimately assist in illuminating historical understandings of childbirth, medicine and concepts of harm, helping to unpack the history of obstetric violence. I am very much looking forward to visiting Glasgow and meeting colleagues!” ”
