Biography
Dr Fiona Reid has previously taught History at UWE, the University of Cardiff and the University of South Wales. She has been an external examiner at the University of Gloucestershire and at Wrexham Glyndwr. She has previously sat on the steering committee of the Women’s History Society and on the Council of the National Army Records Society. She has examined a wide range of PhDs on medicine and warfare, and currently has one PhD student who is writing on gender and the popular press in Birmingham in the 1920s.
Profile
Research Interests
Dr Fiona Reid is an historian of the social and cultural history of war and has written widely about the First World War in Europe and about refugees and displaced people in the Second World War. She is particularly interested in the consequences of war trauma and in the coping mechanisms of combat troops, medical personnel and civilians both during war and afterwards.
Selected previous publications
Medicine in First World War Europe: Soldiers, Medics, Pacifists (London: Bloomsbury 2017)
Broken Men: shell shock, treatment and recovery in Britain 1914-30 (Hambeldon Continuum: 2010) [Paperback version, 2011].
Sharif Gemie, Fiona Reid and Laure Humbert, Outcast Europe, 1936-1948: refugee experiences in an era of total war (Hambledon Continuum, 2011).
Medical voices against war / voices against the medical war’ in Re-thinking Resilience: Health and World War One Edited by Leo van Bergen and Eric Vermetten (Brill, 2020).
I am currently writing about the history of pacifism in Britain, and also about stories of war trauma throughout the twentieth century.
Teaching
Dr Fiona Reid is available to supervise PhDs in her area of expertise. Administrative Responsibilities Dr Fiona Reid is chair of the Student Experience group.
Other Activities
Conferences and Other Research Activity
‘Care after the First World War’, an international, interdisciplinary conference held at the University of Leeds, 9-11 April 2018
‘“My friends looked at me in horror”: coping with wounds and wounded men in the First World War’, Georgian Court University, New Jersey, ‘World War I: Dissent, Activism, and Transformation’, 17 October 2014.
‘“The horrible monotony”: wounds and wounded bodies in the Great War’, Saint-Remy-la-Calonne, ‘Colloque Grande Guerre, Festival littéraire ‘Le Printemps du Grand Meaulnes’, 16 May 2014.
‘The Battle-Stained Hero, the Cheery Chap and “base fellows”’ University of Leeds, ‘The Medical History of the First World War in Europe’, October 2013.
‘Losing Face: Maxillo-Facial Injury in The First World War’ University of Copenhagen, ‘Aftershock’, May 2013.
Publications
Articles in peer-reviewed journals
‘“My friends looked at me in horror”: idealisations of wounded men in the First World War’, Peace and Change 41/1 (January 2016), pp.64-77.
(2015) Fiona Reid and Stephanie Ward, ‘Women, State and Nation: creating gendered identities’, Women’s History Review, 24/1.
‘‘His nerves gave way” Shell shock, history and the memory of the First World in Britain’, Endeavour 38/2 June 2014, pp.91-100.
Fiona Reid and Christine Van Everbroeck, ‘Shell Shock and the Kloppe: War Neuroses amongst British and Belgian troops during and after the First World War’, Medicine Conflict and Survival 30, no. 4 (December 2014), pp.252-75.
‘War Psychiatry’ available in the International Encyclopedia of the First World War. See http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/home/
(2013) Fiona Reid and Sharif Gemie, ‘The Friends Relief Service and Displaced
People in Europe after the Second World War, 1945-1948’, Quaker Studies, 17/2.
(2011) ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’ Encyclopaedia of War (Wiley Blackwell).
(2011) Norman LaPorte, Fiona Reid and Gareth Williams, ‘Cold War Wales: Introduction’, Llafur: Journal of Welsh People’s History, 10/4.
(2011) Sharif Gemie and Fiona Reid, ‘Constructing Citizenship? – Women, Welfare and Refugees (France, 1939-1940)’, Women’s History Review, 20/3.
(2007) ‘Distinguishing between shell-shocked veterans and pauper lunatics: the Ex-Services’ Welfare Society and pauper lunatics after the Great War’, War in History, 14.
(2007) Sharif Gemie and Fiona Reid, ‘Chaos, panic and the historiography of the exode (France, 1940)’, War and Society, XXVI.
(2005) ‘“Playing the game to the army”: The Royal Army Medical Corps, Shell Shock and the Great War’, War and Society, XXIII.
Books
Medicine in First World War Europe: Soldiers, Medics, Pacifists (London: Bloomsbury 2017)
Sharif Gemie, Fiona Reid and Laure Humbert, Outcast Europe, 1936-1948: refugee experiences in an era of total war (Hambledon Continuum, 2011).
Broken Men: shell shock, treatment and recovery in Britain 1914-30 (Hambeldon Continuum: 2010) [Paperback version, 2011].
Edited Books
(2010) Kath Holden and Fiona Reid (eds) Women on the Move: refugees, migration and exile, (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars).
Chapters in Books
Medical voices against war / voices against the medical war’ in Re-thinking Resilience: Health and World War One Edited by Leo van Bergen and Eric Vermetten (Brill, 2020)
‘Losing Face: trauma and maxillofacial injury in the First World War’ in Aftershock: Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the Great War Edited by Peter Leese and Jason Crouthamel (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017) pp.25-47.
Book Reviews
(2017) Wellcome Library Open Peer Review, on Novotny, ‘To “take their place among the productive members of society”: Vocational rehabilitation of WWI wounded at Erskine’,
https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/2-5/v1.
(2013) ‘What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France by Marie Louise Roberts’, in THES.
(2013) Panikos Panayi, Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Combatant Internees During the First World War’, in BBC History.
Popular Articles
‘Haunted by Dreams of the Trenches’, BBC History Armistice Centenary Edition (November 2018)
‘Medical Advances in the First World War’ BBC History: The Story of Medicine (April 2017) pp.109-113.
‘The Great Misconceptions of the First World War: Shell shocked soldiers were usually shot for cowardice during the First World War’ BBC History (August 2014) p.34.
(February 2013) ‘History on film’, BBC History.
(December 2010) ‘Christmas in the Camps: The Friends’ Relief Service and Christmas
celebrations amongst Displaced Persons 1945-1948’, BBC History.
(November 2009) ‘From First Remembrance to Remembrance Today’, BBC History.
(2008) Sharif Gemie, Laure Humbert, Fiona Reid, ‘Why Study Refugee History?
– six answers’, Planet: the Welsh Internationalist, 161.
(2017) ‘Not ‘ordinary lunatics’: the Ex-Services’ Welfare Society and the treatment of shell-shocked men after the Great War’, Stand To! Journal of the Western Front Association.
Public Engagement and online
BBC Radio Lincolnshire, Interview for ‘A Family in World War One’ (transmission date 12 November 2017).
Arts For Medicine, Invited speaker at (one day symposium) 30 September 2017.
Liverpool Cathedral, ‘Shell Shock, Men and Medicine in the First World War’, Liverpool Cathedral, 18 September 2017 (talk jointly organised by Liverpool University and Liverpool Cathedral).
The National Army Museum, ‘Drugs, Alcohol and Lucky Charms: soldiers and self-medication in war’, (15 September 2017). See
Combat Stress (with King’s Centre for Military Health Research) Seminar on History and Practice of treating PTSD, 8 June 2017.
The National Army Museum, ‘From Shellshock to PTSD: Discussion on How Best To Support Our Troops’ – Matthew Green, Dr Fiona Reid & Jake Wood, 19 May 2016.
World War One and facial injury podcast for the University of South Wales, October 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxmA8l0aJJ0&feature=youtu.be
Western Front Association, ‘Shell Shock after the First World War’, South Gloucestershire branch, Wednesday 19 October 2016.
Open University (MOOC) ‘What is shell shock? Understanding shell shock’ Open Learn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOJ_2NaydE0&lc=z13ehbyr4uvwsjke223vtp1obxijerdoi04.1498437901205117.
Open University, War, Conflict and Politics Research Group, ‘Surviving Shell Shock during the First World War’, 21 July 2011.
Selected Conference Addresses and Papers
Keynote speaker at ‘Care after the First World War’, an international, interdisciplinary conference to be held at the University of Leeds, 9-11 April 2018 http://menwomenandcare.leeds.ac.uk/events/care-after-the-first-world-war/call-for-papers/
‘“My friends looked at me in horror”: coping with wounds and wounded men in the First World War’, Georgian Court University, New Jersey, ‘World War I: Dissent, Activism, and Transformation’, 17 October 2014.
‘“The horrible monotony”: wounds and wounded bodies in the Great War’, Saint-Remy-la-Calonne, ‘Colloque Grande Guerre, Festival littéraire ‘Le Printemps du Grand Meaulnes’, 16 May 2014.
‘The Battle-Stained Hero, the Cheery Chap and “base fellows”’ University of Leeds, ‘The Medical History of the First World War in Europe’, October 2013.
‘Losing Face: Maxillo-Facial Injury in The First World War’ University Of Copenhagen, ‘Aftershock’, May 2013.