Dr Eilis Boyle

About

Dr Eilis Boyle completed her PhD in history at the University of Leeds in 2020. She was a member of the European Research Council-funded Men, Women and Care project which explored the gendering of formal and informal caregiving in interwar Britain. In March 2021 Eilis joined the Living Assessments project as a Postdoctoral Research Associate.

Research interests

Eilis is interested in histories of disability, mental health, gender and trauma in the twentieth century. Her research is broadly concerned with difference and ‘deviance’ and the ways in which people resist, rework and reify social and cultural norms.

Relations and concepts of ‘care’ have been a central aspect of her research to date, particularly as they relate to social and structural inequalities. Her recent work draws on disability studies and gender studies approaches to interrogate structural dynamics of power and their relation to everyday lived and affective experiences within systems of ‘care’. Eilis has published on the history of facial difference and masculinity and is currently working on a monograph which explores the reconfiguration of disability, gender and power in interwar spaces of ‘care’, focusing on the experiences of mentally and facially wounded (male and female) veterans and their families.

Eilis has been involved in several public engagement projects on the social and cultural legacies of the First World War, including co-curating an exhibition at the Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery which considered the conflict’s impact on refugees, gender relations and ideas about disability, politics and childhood. She has also collaborated with the History & Policy @ Leeds project and produced policy recommendations based on her research on the intersections between masculinity, men’s mental health, and the experience of claiming state welfare.  

Publications

‘“An uglier duckling than before”: Reclaiming Agency and Visibility Amongst Facially-Wounded Ex-Servicemen in Britain After the First World War’, Alter European Journal of Disability Research, 13.4 (2019), 308-22

(With Dr Jessica Meyer), evidence submitted to Mental Health of Men and Boys Inquiry, UK Parliament Women and Equalities Committee, 22 May 2019