Hannah Halliwell
Affiliation
Biography
I am a lecturer in nineteenth-century French art history, with a focus on the female body, addiction and alcohol/drug use, and the medical sector. I research a range of art styles and mediums, including Impressionism. My monograph, Art, Medicine, and Femininity: Visualising the Morphine Addict in Paris, 1870-1914 (McGill-Queen's University Press), is on the visual culture of drug addiction and how it relates to social issues of Third Republic France. It has been reviewed in numerous publications, including French History, The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, and Histoire, médecine et santé. My next book, co-authored with Professor Frances Fowle, is a Historical Dictionary of Impressionism (out August 2026 with Bloomsbury).
I have presented my research to public and academic audiences around the world - across the UK, in the USA, in China, and elsewhere. My ongoing and future research continues to explore bodies, addiction, recreational and medical drug use, and feminism.
I am an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). I also hold the position of Reviews Editor for the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs journal (University of Chicago Press). I have worked previously as a lecturer in art history and visual culture at the University of Exeter and held art history teaching fellow positions here at ECA at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Birmingham. I received my PhD in Art History from the University of Birmingham in 2021. My PhD was funded my Midlands4Cities (AHRC) and the Haywood Fellowship.
Research Interests
- Nineteenth-Century Art
- French Art
- Medical Visual Culture
- Drugs and Addiction
- The Body/Nude
Current Project
My research looks at the gendering of addiction to drugs and alcohol in French visual culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with a specific focus on the feminisation of drug use(rs) and the impact of feminism.
Publications
Book: Art, Medicine, and Femininity: Visualising the Morphine Addict in Paris, 1870-1914 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2024).
Book: Historical Dictionary of Impressionism (Bloomsbury, 2026), co-authored with Frances Fowle