Professor Turner’s inaugural lecture will address what happened to disabled people in Britain’s industrial revolution; how industrial expansion contributed to the incidence of injury, disease and impairment; whether industrial change led to increasing marginalisation of the disabled and how receptive the workplace was to men, women and children with impairments.

Drawing on findings from the Wellcome Trust Programme Award project 'Disability and Industrial Society: A Comparative Cultural History of British Coalfields 1780-1948', this inaugural lecture will reveal the hidden history of disabled people in Britain's eighteenth and nineteenth century industrial development and explores the implications of this history for disabled people today.

About the speaker

David Turner was brought up in Stoke-on-Trent. He did his first degree at Oxford University and a Master's at Durham, before returning to Oxford to write a DPhil on the history of marital infidelity in early modern England. This formed the basis of his first book, Fashioning Adultery: Gender, Sex and Civility in England 1660-1740 (Cambridge University Press, 2002). His recent work has focussed on the history of disability.

Professor Turner’s book, Disability in Eighteenth-Century England (Routledge, 2012), based on research funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, won the Disability History Association Outstanding Publication Prize for the best book published worldwide in disability history.

Committed to communicating the richness of disabled people's experiences in history to a wider audience, he was historical adviser on the acclaimed 'Disability: A New History' (BBC Radio 4, 2013), which was shortlisted for the 2014 Times Higher Education 'Research Project of the Year' award. He is director of 'Disability and Industrial Society: A Comparative Cultural History of British Coalfields, 1780-1948' funded by a Wellcome Trust History of Medicine Programme Award and is writing a book with Daniel Blackie on disability in Britain's coal industry.

'Locating Disability in Britain's Industrial Revolution' will take place on Thursday 5 May 2016 at the Faraday Lecture Theatre, Faraday Building, Swansea University (Singleton Park Campus).  Reception from 6.00 pm, lecture begins at 6.30 pm.

Admission is free and all are welcome to attend.  BSL translation will be available.  To reserve your place click here.   Email riah@swansea.ac.uk or telephone 01792 205190 and leave your name and number of tickets required.  For more information, click here. Tel: 01792 295190.

Image: Patients at The Rest, Porthcawl, established as a seaside convalescent hospital for the working classes, particularly miners. Circa 1920. Credit: Richard Burton Archives, Swansea University.