Victoria Bates is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Bristol. She specialises in the social history of medicine and the medical humanities. Most recently, her research has focused on ‘humanistic’ healthcare environments and sensory ‘design for health’ in theory/practice since 1948. She focuses on English hospitals under the National Health Service, but is also interested in the relationship between national and international trends in healthcare architecture, design and sensescapes. In 2017/18 the University of Bristol Strategic Research Fund funded the development of her research in sensory history, with a project entitled ‘Better by Design: Towards a Sensory History of the Modern Hospital’. Her visit to Montreal as a visiting scholar in 2019 is supported by the University of Bristol International Strategic Fund, with the goal of exploring opportunities for international and interdisciplinary collaboration in studies of the senses, health and healthcare environments.
This project links to her collaborative and public-facing work on the senses and health, including:
- The AHRC/REACT project InTouch.
- A soundscape of hospital arts/health for the University of Bristol Feel It festival.
- The GW4 Crucible Project ‘Rethinking Healthy Spaces: Evidence, Evaluation and Design’.
- The AHRC/EPSRC ‘Immersive Experiences’ project ‘A Sense of Place: Exploring nature & wellbeing through the non-visual senses’.
A list of Dr Bates’ publications is available HERE.
