Helena Constance Aeberli

Research Topic

‘Great and dangerous disorders’: diet, disease, and disordered eating in early modern England.

My research explores diet, disease, and disordered eating in early modern English medicine and culture. Falling within the fields of medical, cultural, and intellectual history, my research examines what ‘eating disorders’ meant to early modern people, before considering the cultural meanings and anxieties with which they became entangled. I therefore question the conventional depiction of eating disorders as a modern phenomenon, demonstrating that they were a significant source of concern in medical and moral discourse throughout the 1600s.

I graduated with a first-class BA in History and Politics from Jesus College Oxford (2022), with a dissertation supervised by Dr Leif Dixon on sleep paralysis, sexuality, and the supernatural in early modern England. I also hold an MSt in Early Modern History from Jesus College Oxford (2023). I was awarded the Best Dissertation in Cohort Prize for my thesis ‘More beastliness than beauty: Gendering pica in Early Modern England’, which will form the basis for my DPhil research.

My DPhil is generously co-funded by the OOC AHRC-DTP, the Clarendon Fund, and All Souls College.

Supervisor: George Southcombe and Sloan Mahone