Katherine Angel was previously a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre; Katherine has joined QMU as a Leverhulme Trust Fellow from May 2013.

For inquiries relating to Unmastered: A Book On Desire, Most Difficult To Tell (Penguin/Allen Lane), please write to this address: Maria.GarbuttLucero@uk.penguingroup.com.

For information about Unmastered and other writing, see Katherine's author website.

ACADEMIC PROFILE

• Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick (2010-2013)
• Research Fellow, Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick (2008-2010)
• PhD, History and Philosophy of Science Department, University of Cambridge (2008)
• Research Associate, History and Philosophy of Science Department, University of Cambridge (2004)
• Research Assistant, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London and Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London (2002)
• MPhil, History and Philosophy of Science Department, University of Cambridge (2000)
• JH Choate Fellow, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University (1999)
• BA Hons, Philosophy, University of Cambridge (1998)
  

RESEARCH AND WRITING

Katherine was writing a monograph, entitled Psychiatric Ontologies: Female Sexual Dysfunction and the DSM, 1960 to the Present, based on her Wellcome Trust-funded research into FSD in American and British psychiatry. Examining the emergence of ‘FSD’ as a category over this period, the research scrutinises the shifting relationships between psychiatry, feminism and sex research through the decades. It probes the contemporary legacy of psychoanalytic psychiatry’s decline and of second-wave feminism; and assesses the relationship between American and British psychiatry, and between medico-pharmaceutical and popular 'post-feminist' discourse about sexual problems and pleasures. It probes the discomfort with speaking psychologically and historically about female sexuality, exploring in the process contemporary relationships to the activity of looking back at the past – of psychiatry, feminism, and indeed the activity of looking back itself.

Katherine has also written a book of literary non-fiction (Penguin/Allen Lane, September 2012), called Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell (also being published in by USA by Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Germany by Klett-Cotta/Tropen; and the Netherlands by De Bezige Bij). Klett-Cotta has described the book as an 'oustanding literary contribution to the ongoing discussion about women's desire, sexuality, and power'. Poet and Booker-shortlisted novelist Adam Foulds has described Unmastered as 'poetic in the best sense; sharply truthful, musical, and beautifully patterned', as well as 'an act of cultural resistance, and a book you immediately start to re-read.' More information is available here.

CONFERENCE

Katherine's conference, Looking Back: 'Post-Feminism', History, Narrative, took place on 20th and 21st September, at the Institute of Advanced Study.

OTHER PROJECTS

Katherine also works on a Wellcome Trust-funded project on the History of Mental Health Care in Postwar Britain, with Mathew Thomson, Rhodri Hayward, John Turner, Bill Fulford, John Hall, and Chris Millard (University of Warwick and Queen Mary University of London). This has involved a series of witness seminars with key figures in British mental health services (both practitioners and policy-makers).

She ran the interdisciplinary Gender and Feminist Theory Reading Group, together with Institute of Advanced Studies Fellow Dr. Laura Schwartz.

And she is also involved in writing and commissioning guidelines for the media on sex research, with Professor Feona Attwood and Dr Meg Barker (part of the Onscenity Network).

TEACHING

2011-2012: Lecture on 'Judith Walkowitz: From Sex to Gender', in the Historiography module.

: Seminar on The History of Medicine and the History of Sexuality: Uneasy Bedfellows? in the MA in the History of Medicine.

: Seminar on Michel Foucault in the MA in Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health at Warwick Medical School.

2010-2011: Seminar tutor for the Historiography module.

: Seminar on Medicine, Modernity, and Postmodernity on the MA in the History of Medicine.

: Seminar on 'Medicalisation and Biopolitics' in the MA in Philosophy and Ethics of Mental Health at Warwick Medical School.

PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT

In 2009 Katherine worked with Dr Claudia Stein on Sexual Health Awareness Week (SHAW) which both provided information on sexual health and explored the University’s encounter with STDs and sexual health activism from the 1980s to the present. She organised and chaired an event with screenwriter Andrew Davies on his cult TV series from 1986, A Very Peculiar Practice: Andrew Davies in Conversation. You can see her interview with Andrew Davies here.

 
Selected Publications

BOOKS

Angel, K. (2012) Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult To Tell. (Penguin, Allen Lane, UK; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, USA; Klett-Cotta/Tropen, Germany; De Bezige Bij, Netherlands.)

Angel. K.. Jones, E., Neve, M. (2003, Eds.) European Psychiatry on the Eve of War: Aubrey Lewis, the Maudsley Hospital and the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1930s. (London: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, Medical History Supplement 22)

MONOGRAPH IN PREPARATION

Angel, K. Psychiatric Ontologies: Female Sexual Dysfunction and the DSM, 1960 to the Present.

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

Angel, K. (2012): 'Contested Psychiatric Ontology and Feminist Critique: "Female Sexual Dysfunction" and the DSM', History of the Human Sciences, 25 (4), 3-24.

Angel. K. (2010): 'The History of Female Sexual Dysfunction as a "Mental Disorder" in the Twentieth Century', Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 23(6), pp. 536-541.

Angel, K. (2009): ‘The Precautions of Clinical Waste: Disposable Medical Sharps in the United Kingdom’, Biosocieties, 4 (2&3), pp. 183-205.

Angel, K. (2006): 'Green Fingers or Pink Viagra? Female Sexual Dysfunction and Medicalisation in Contemporary Medical Discourse', in Bordering Biomedicine (Peter Twohig and Vera Kalitzkus, Eds.) (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp. 86-102.

Angel, K. (2003): 'Defining Psychiatry: Aubrey Lewis's 1938 Report and the Rockefeller Foundation', in European Psychiatry on the Eve of War: Aubrey Lewis, the Maudsley Hospital and the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1930s (Katherine Angel, Edgar Jones, and Michael Neve, Eds.) (London: Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, Medical History Supplement 22), pp. 39-56.

ARTICLES IN PREPARATION

Angel, K. 'A Very Simple Answer: Causal Reasoning in the Recent History of Peptic Ulcer'.

Angel, K., Hall, J., Hayward, R., Millard, C., Thomson, M., Turner, J. 'Post-War Mental Health Services in the United Kingdom'.

REVIEWS

Angel. K. (2013 forthcoming) Review of 'Vagina: A New Biography' (N. Wolf). The Lancet.

Angel, K. (2013 forthcoming) Review of Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals: How Drug Companies Plan to Profit from Female Sexual Dysfunction (R. Moynihan, B. Mintzes). Psychology and Sexuality.

Angel, K. (2012) Review of A Modern History of the Stomach: Gastric Illness, Medicine, and the Medical Profession, c. 1800-1950 (I. Miller). Social History of Medicine.

Angel, K. (2011) Review of International Relations in Psychiatry: Britain, Germany and the United States to World War II (Eds. V Roelcke, P.J. Weindling, L. Westwood.) Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 85(2), pp. 305-307.

JOURNALISM

Angel, K. (2012) 'Desire that dare not speak', New Statesman, 20 September 2012.

Angel, K. (2009): 'London's Crossbones Graveyard', Independent, Saturday Magazine, 31 October 2009 (London's Crossbones Graveyard)

Angel, K. (August 2007): 'That's Amora' (review of London's 'Academy of Sex and Relationships'), Prospect Magazine (http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2007/08/thatsamora/)

For other writings, including guest blog pieces, see www.katherineangel.com