Fiona O'Brien, MA

Meet the Contributor

Area(s) of Atlantic Study: New England & New York (U.S), Great Britain

Academic Background

Fiona is a PhD student at Fordham University, located in New York City. She received her MA and BA in History from the University of Toronto. Her research focuses broadly on early modern reproductive healthcare and crime, with an emphasis on the intersections of medical history and the history of law and punishment. Currently, her two projects focus respectively on the use of Galenic humoralism by English women in New England, and their collaboration with Indigenous populations for aid in pregnancy, birth, and infant care; as well as the history of abortion and infanticide at English common law.

Research Interests

Beyond her doctoral research, Fiona is interested in research relating to:

• Medical History

  Histories of Crime and Punishment

  Food History

  Folklore & Folk History

  Women’s History & Feminist Histories

Why Written in the Waves?

Like many young women entering the discipline, Fiona found the practice of history to be oversaturated by men–both as historians and as subjects of investigation–and methodologies to be largely determined by schools of thought also dominated by men. A thoughtful, considered approach to history that considers women allows for new findings to come to light: rather than merely remaining side characters in a domestic drama, women emerge, when we consider them fully, as leading drivers of the past, for good and bad. Atlantic history, like this reconsidered history of women, allows historians to view a greater breadth of the past without being siloed between borders.

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