In this controversial and thought-provoking lecture, Christine Hallett will reflect on her career in Nursing History. She will use the concept of power as a lens through which to analyse both the nature of nursing and the dilemmas faced by those who write its history. Christine will present narratives which explore the personal power of individual nurses – ranging from the famous and the infamous to the largely-forgotten. She will also trace the ebb and flow of collective power within what has long been the largest, and yet (politically) the weakest, profession in the United Kingdom.

The lecture will include a consideration of key moments in which the profession pivoted around power-struggles of which its members were largely unaware. She will argue that these defining moments in the profession’s history were characterised by the ways in which British nurses claimed, took, avoided or relinquished power. Christine’s arguments are designed to challenge the thinking of present-day nurses – and of those who write histories of nursing.

Doors open at 5.30pm and the talk starts at 6pm.

Christine E. Hallett was educated at the University of Manchester in the early 1980s before working as a community nurse for four years. She returned to the university as a research assistant in 1989, spending twenty-nine years in the Department (later School) of Nursing and becoming Professor of Nursing History in 2010. Christine was subsequently offered a professorial chair in the History Department at the University of Huddersfield, where she remained for four years before retiring in 2022.

Christine has published widely on nursing practice, nursing education and on the histories of both medicine and nursing. Her key focus during the last ten years of her career was on the history of nursing practice during the First World War – a subject about which she published five books, including Containing Trauma (2009, Manchester University Press) and Veiled Warriors (2014, Oxford University Press). Christine has acted as historical consultant to the BBC, the National Trust, The Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps, The Florence Nightingale Museum and the Science Museum, London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, UK.

I MAGE: Wellcome Collection

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Professions of power and powerlessness: reflections on nursing history