I research the intersection of commercial industries, ‘health’ technologies, marketing, and public health in contemporary Britain, often through the lens of patient (consumer) narratives, mass-media representations, and stigma.

My interdisciplinary research links the medical humanities with policy, cultural, business, and communication studies. I have published on maternal mental illness and tanning culture, including my book, The Rise and Fall of the Sunbed in Britain: Tanning Culture From Fad to Fear (Bloomsbury, 2025; free digital download).

I am The Gazette's editor — a monthly digital newsletter for the Society for the Social History of Medicine. If you would like to circulate news, events, and opportunities related to the history of medicine, feel free to email me. 

At present, I am working on Professors Anna Greenwood, Alex Mold and Heather Wardle’s project, Kicking the Habit: Historicising ‘Addictive’ Sport Sponsorship in Britain, 1965-2025 (Wellcome-funded, 2024-30). My strand explores the gambling industry. We are developing a monograph and articles on the corporate tactics, marketing strategies, and public health interventions pertaining to unhealthy sports sponsorship.

We also launched an interactive Digital Map of Unhealthy Sports Sponsorship. We invite all submissions of photographs, ephemera, and memorabilia from the twentieth century to the present.

From 2021-24, I was a Research Fellow on Emeritus Professor Hilary Marland’s project The Last Taboo of Motherhood?: Postnatal Mental Disorders in Twentieth-Century Britain (University of Warwick, Wellcome-funded). I examined how mothers (and fathers) narrated and experienced parental mental illness, particularly through television, radio and print press testimony, and interviews.

From 2020-21, I undertook an Early Career Fellowship on the Medical Humanities China-UK Exchange Programme (Universities of Strathclyde, Manchester and Shanghai), and an IAS Fellowship (Warwick).

From 2015-19, funded by Wellcome, I completed my Medical Humanities MA and PhD on tanning technologies, predominantly sunbeds, but also fake tan and tanning injections (Warwick), and undertook a Secondment Fellowship at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. I am part of NHS Scotland’s Sunbed Safety Review Group.

I am passionate about using research to inform policy more effectively, and I enjoy making history accessible to the public. I regularly provide expertise to news outlets (e.g., the BBC, Scotsman, Refinery29, and i-News), radio (Clyde 1), podcasts, and archive, campaign, and government groups.

Fabiola is interested in the commercial determinants of health, specialising in the history of industry, advertising, technology, mass media, (patient-)consumer narratives, and stigma in twentieth and early twenty-first-century Britain.

Research groups

• Sociology
• Economic & Social History

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Prior publications

2023: Global Research Priority, and Centre for the History of Medicine Funding, Univeristy of Warwick (with Emeritus Professor Hilary Marland)

2022-3: Wellcome Trust Research Enrichment, Public Engagement Award (led by Emeritus Prof. Marland)

2022-3: Warwick University’s Arts & Humanities Impact Award (led by Emeritus Prof. Marland)

2020: Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick, ECR Fellowship Award

2019: Wellcome Trust, Humanities and Social Science Secondment Fellowship Award, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology

2016-20: Wellcome Trust, Medical Humanities PhD Award

2015-6: Wellcome Trust, History of Medicine MA Award

2012: University of Liverpool, Study Abroad Semester Award for Monash University, Australia. 

I am open—and looking forward—to supervising PhD students and their projects, and helping to secure PhD funding (e.g., SGSS). My research specialism encompasses the history of controversial industries, technologies, marketing, and products, as well as maternal and paternal mental health, in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Britain. As a health and business historian based in Sociology and Cultural Studies (within the School of Social and Political Sciences), I am happy to co-supervise across different departments.

She has lectured and taught seminars to both undergraduates and postgraduates on History of Britain, Medical History, and Media and Health modules/courses at the University of Warwick (2022-24) and Strathclyde (2020-21).

Research fellowships

• 2020 - 2020: Wellcome Trust Secondment Fellowship, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology