Dr Claire Jones

Dr Claire L. Jones is a Senior Lecturer in the History of Medicine.

Claire joined the School of History in 2016, after holding research and teaching positions at KCL, Leeds and Warwick. She completed her PhD in the School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science at the University of Leeds in collaboration with the Thackray Medical Museum in 2010, before returning in 2012 to become Leeds’ first Director of the Museum of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine.

As a trained museum professional, Claire has also been Learning and Access Officer at the Infirmary Museum, University of Worcester, Curator at the George Marshall Medical Museum, and Assistant Curator at the Thackray Medical Museum.

She is visiting fellow at the Centre for the History of Medicine, University of Warwick, and the Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science and the University of Leeds. 

Claire’s research centres on the cultural, economic and social history of medicine and health in Britain post 1750, with particular emphases on the relationship between medicine and commerce, and the ways in which this relationship affects professional social structures, consumption and material culture.

She has published widely on this topic. Her books include Cultures of Oral Health: Practices, Discourses and Theory (with Barry Gibson. Routledge, 2022); The Business of Birth Control: Contraception and Commerce Before the Sexual Revolution (MUP, 2020); Rethinking Modern Protheses in Anglo-American Commodity Cultures, 1820-1939 (MUP, 2017); and The Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870-1914 (Pickering & Chatto, 2013).

She has held grants as both Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator from the Academy of Medical Sciences, Arts and Humanities Research Council, Wellcome Trust, Scientific Instrument Society, and the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society.
She has also developed public engagement projects with a number of heritage organisations, including the British Dental Association Museum, Thackray Medical Museum, Leeds Museums and Galleries, and the Florence Nightingale Museum.

Claire teaches on aspects of the history and the social and cultural contexts of medicine and health in society from the mid-18th century to the present day. 

Claire welcomes enquiries from prospective research students interested in the history of medicine post-1750, particularly those whose interests lie in medical technologies, consumption and material culture.