Conversation with Dr Chris Millard

In this episode, Prof Ian Sabroe and Dr Dieter Declercq talk with Dr Chris Millard about the challenges and benefits of interdisciplinary research, the history of medical labels, and the question of value in the humanities.

Chris Millard is a Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Sheffield. He has worked on the history of psychiatric and clinical categories such as ‘self-harm’, ‘attempted suicide’, ‘illness deception’ and ‘child abuse’. Chris is currently writing a history of Munchausen Syndrome and Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (now called ‘fabricated or induced illness’), and attempting to write history that takes adequate account of personal experiences. Chris teaches on the history of psychiatry, the history of emotions, and the history of ideas of ‘parity of esteem for mental health’. He has collaborated with Prof Ian Sabroe supervising projects across the medicine / humanities divide on postnatal depression, physician accounts of illness, clinical uncertainty and physician error.