Staff Profiles

I work at the intersection of environmental and medical history. My research is innovative in taking an arts and humanities approach to topics normally investigated by social and natural scientists such as human relationships with landscape in relation to health and wellbeing. As a scholar with a background in science communication as well as history, I often investigate current issues through the lens of the past and I believe historic research on landscape and human health will become increasingly relevant in a post-Covid and Climate Crisis world. I am also beginning to take a sensory approach in my research as I feel that this will allow for a new understanding of human-environment relationships and also encourage a more inclusive approach to landscape interpretation. 

My recent Wellcome Fellowship, The Garden as a Laboratory, merged the history of medicine, health and science, with that of the landscape and environment. Other areas of expertise include the design and use of nineteenth and twentieth-century English hospital and asylum gardens, cold bathing as a healthy activity in the eighteenth-century landscape garden and the role of medical practitioners in the Victorian parks movement. By examining the creation and use of green and blue spaces in relation to changing medical concepts, my research crosses the disciplinary boundaries of medical history, landscape history and history of science.

Before arriving at Newcastle in 2019, I was a Senior Lecturer in History at the University Chester, a Wellcome Fellow in Medical History & Humanities at King’s College London (2013-15) and a Research Fellow on the Leverhulme funded Historic Parks & Gardens of England project at the University of Bristol (2007-2012). I have also worked as a museum assistant, writer and editor for Usborne publishing and as a Research Facilitator for Oxford University.

My research bridges the intersection of environmental and medical humanities in a variety of ways as can be seen through my current project portfolio: 

I am currently leading two networks. The first funded by the Wellcome Trust, 'MedEnv: Intersections in Medical and Environmental Humanities' (2020-2022) is organised with colleagues at Liverpool, Cardiff and Bristol Universities. Our ambition is to lead research in this field from an historically-informed humanities standpoint and to develop future research collaborations to consider the rich nature of human and non-human interrelationships and their impact on health and wellbeing.  

The second is the AHRC ‘Unlocking Landscapes Network: History, Culture and Sensory Diversity in Landscape Use and Decision Making’ (2020-2021) which has been funded under the Research Networking Highlight Notice for Changing Landscapes: ‘Towards a new Decision Making Framework for UK Landscapes and Land Assets. By bringing together academics, practitioners, artists and policy makers, ‘Unlocking Landscapes’ seeks to bridge traditional policy silos. This is a collaborative network with Dr Sarah Bell of the University of Exeter, and includes colleagues from the Universities of Exeter and Bristol, Historic England, the National Trust, the Sensory Trust, Sense, and Natural Inclusion. You can read more about our ongoing work here: https://sensing-nature.com/unlocking-landscapes

As well as running these networks I am also the Co-I on the AHRC funded ‘In All Our Footsteps: Tracking, Mapping and Experiencing Rights of Way in Post-War Britain’ (2021-2024) led by Professor Glen O'Hara at Oxford Brookes University. I lead the strand on pathways for meaning, health and wellbeing which is investigating how rights of way are central in facilitating activities for physical and mental health such as walking, and the ability to connect humans to nature for wellbeing. Our work has important policy as well as practical implications, so the team will therefore work with The Ramblers, as our Project Partner, as well as representatives from Historic England, Natural England, The National Trust, walking practitioners and academics from a range of disciplines to interrogate the importance of rights of way in their past and present context.

I’m also a Co-I on the large cross-disciplinary project funded by NERC, ‘Connected treescapes: a portfolio approach for delivering multiple public benefits from UK treescapes in the rural-urban continuum’ (2021-2024) led by Professor Piran White of York University. 

Alongside these I am also a core collaborator on the ‘Senses and Health/Care Environments’ Network led by Victoria Bates, University of Bristol. 

I am interested in supervising any PhD projects or other postgraduate research projects that investigate the modern history of medical and/or environmental history, landscape design, architecture for health or that use history to understand current issues such as the climate crisis, air pollution and urban life in a post-pandemic world.

I am module leader for the following courses:

• HIS3349: Health and disease in the Anthropocene: Intersections of Human and Environmental Health post 1800
• SHS8124: Introduction to the History of Medicine

And I teach on the following modules:

• HCA1007: Stuff: Living in a Material World
• HIS2320: The Supernatural: The Cultural History of Occult Forces
• HIS2321: Global Environmental History: From the ‘Little Ice Age’ to Greta Thunberg
• HIS2095: Social Histories of Alcohol: Britain and Ireland, 1700 – Present
• HIS3030: History and Society
• HIS3020: Writing History
• SHS8128: Diseases in History

• Hickman C, O'Hara G. Delineating the Landscape: Planning, Mapping and the Historic Imaginings of Rights of Way in Twentieth-Century England and Wales. In: Svensson, D; Saltzman, K; Sörlin, S, ed. Pathways: Exploring the Routes of a Movement Heritage. White Horse Press, 2022, pp.56-73.
• Hickman C. Pine fresh: The cultural and medical context of pine scent in relation to health – from the forest to the home. Medical Humanities 2021, Epub ahead of print.
• Hickman C. The Doctor's Garden: Medicine, Science, and Horticulture in Britain. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2021.
• Bates V, Hickman C, Manchester H, Prior J, Singer S. Beyond landscape's visible realm: Recorded sound, nature, and wellbeing. Health and Place 2020, 61, 102271.
• Hickman C. ‘The want of a proper Gardiner’: late Georgian Scottish botanic gardeners as intermediaries of medical and scientific knowledge. British Journal for the History of Science 2019, 52(4), 543-567.
• Preston R, Hickman C. Cultivation in Captivity: Gender, Class and Reform in the Promotion and Practice of Women’s Prison Gardening in England, 1900–1939. Women's History 2019, 2(13).
• Hickman C. Care in the countryside: The theory and practice of therapeutic landscapes in the early twentieth-century. In: Malcolm D; Mitchell E, ed. Gardens and Green Spaces in the West Midlands since 1700. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2018, pp.160-85.
• Hickman Clare. Curiosity and Instruction: British and Irish Botanic Gardens and their Audiences, 1760–1800. Environment and History 2018, 24(1), 59-80.
• Hickman C. The garden as a laboratory: the role of domestic gardens as places of scientific exploration in the long 18th century. Post-Medieval Archaeology 2014, 48(1), 229-247.