Claire Turner

The Sensescapes of Cancer, c.1700-1950

This project will question the extent to which sensory experiences guided perceptions and understandings of the disease and its treatment in a range of medical, domestic, and industrial settings.

The project uses an integrated three-step approach to different forms and experiences of cancer to break down some of the complex medical and cultural debates around malignant disease in the past. By focusing on ‘work’, ‘space’, and ‘identity’, the project aims to transform our understanding of cancer and shed light on the potential of the senses as an avenue through which to investigate histories of health, medicine, and society.

Claire Turner is an early career researcher specialising in sensory histories of disease in the early modern period. She received her PhD from the University of Leeds in 2024, where she focused on sensory experiences of plague in early modern London. Since then, Claire has developed a new research project on cancer and the senses. She was the 2024-5 Postdoctoral Fellow with the Society for Renaissance Studies, where she undertook research on her new project, entitled ‘Cancer, Identity, and the Senses in Early Modern England, c.1583-1699’. At the same time, she was the Digital Engagement Fellow on the AHRC-funded Hematopolitics project at the University of Leeds, where she curated a digital exhibition on blood and identity in collaboration with Thackray Museum of Medicine.

In 2025- 6, Claire is a Bridging Fellow in Medical Humanities at Durham University, where she is developing a project on cancer and the senses in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Claire’s project at the JRRI will examine the significance of the senses in experiences and perceptions of cancer in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early-twentieth-century Britain.