PhD student
College: Corpus Christi
Supervisors: Nick Hopwood and Sarah Marks
Thesis topic: From Disorder to Identity: The Transformation of ADHD in the Age of Neurodiversity
Research interests: history and philosophy of medicine, especially psychiatry and cognitive science; neurodiversity; philosophy of science; disability
Email address: jb2690@cam.ac.uk
Current research
Funded by a scholarship from the Cambridge Trust, my research explores the twenty-first century history of ADHD and its reframing from a medical category into a more complex identity. My research uses archival evidence, oral history interviews, and internet history methodologies to reconstruct how a range of stakeholders, including advocacy groups, patients, researchers and medical professionals, have shaped the framing of ADHD over the past three decades.
In the process I aim to develop a model for studying shifting webs of communication in the age of social media. At the same time, I wish to refine analytical frameworks, notably Ian Hacking’s ‘looping’, that are commonly used to describe and conceptualize interactions between the human sciences and other social worlds.
Education
2023: MSc. History and Philosophy of Science, Utrecht University
2021: BA Philosophy with a minor in Physics, KU Leuven
Teaching
Guest Lecturer for the BA course ‘Empathy for biologists, jurists and psychologists’, Utrecht University, 2024 and 2025
Outputs
Blog post: Lessons from the history of the DSM-III – Shells and Pebbles. 2024
Online Exhibition: Haarlem’s Museum of the Mind. Madness Canada website. Co-authored with Prof. Megan Davies. 2023