Joy Hawkins

Joy is currently the Admissions Director for the Interdisciplinary Institute for the Humanities, including all the Humanities Foundation Year programmes.

Before joining the Interdisciplinary Institute for the Humanities in 2015, Joy was a Tutor in the School of History, teaching medical and social history from the time of Galen until the eve of the First World War.

Joy Hawkins is a medical historian by training. Her PhD thesis focused on the medical, social and religious responses to blindness and eye complaints in later medieval England.

Joy's PhD thesis focused on the causes of blindness in later medieval England, closely examining how ordinary people dealt with eye complaints on a daily basis and how theologians viewed those with poor eyesight. She has published on the interconnection between medicine, religion and gender during the Middle Ages.  

Her current main research interests are centred around the body, health and diseases in the past, particularly during the late Middle Ages. She also explores the changing understandings of ailments, injuries and bodily fluids over time, considering how patients' and practitioners' experiences have been recorded throughout history.