Staff profile

Coreen McGuire is a historian of interwar Britain doing interdisciplinary research at the nexus between disability history, medical history, and science and technology studies. She completed her PhD on the measurement of hearing loss in the British Telephone System at the University of Leeds in the Centre for History and Philosophy of Science. Following this, she took up a postdoctoral position at the University of Bristol and developed research on the historical measurement of respiratory disability as part of the Life of Breath project, a Wellcome funded project which was led jointly by Bristol and Durham.

Her first book, Measuring difference, numbering normal: setting the standards for disability in the inter-war period (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020) is available open-access. Described in (Twentieth Century British History, 2021) as rendering 'visible the long implicit but underexplored connections between biometrics and disability’ (Twentieth Century British History, 2021). It has been internationally praised as: a 'valuable contribution to a vibrant discussion at the intersection of STS and disability studies' (Social History of Medicine, 2020) and a ‘remarkable work [that] can be considered an essential read for any historian and philosopher of science and technology, as well as for those interested in disability studies’ (Canadian Review of Medical History) 

She (alongside Professor Alex Broadbent) leads The Measurement Lab; part of the new Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities (DRP-MH) that will be hosted by the IMH from September 2023 to the end of August 2030. She is a Fellow of the Centre for Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Public Health, leading on the Measurement Theme. She is co-editor with Dr Joe Martin of The British Journal for the History of Science book reviews section and can be contacted in this capacity at reviews.editor@bshs.org.uk 

Dr McGuire welcomes requests for research supervision. 

Authored book

• McGuire, C. (2020). Measuring difference, numbering normal: Setting the standards for disability in the interwar period. Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526143167

Chapter in book

• McGuire, C., Virdi, J., & Hutton, J. (2021). Respiratory technologies and the co-production of breathing in the twentieth century. In A. Hanley, & J. Meyer (Eds.), Patient voices in Britain, 1840–1948 (183-221). Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526154897.00017
• McGuire, C. (2020). ‘Inventing amplified telephony: the co-creation of aural technology and disability’. In C. Jones (Ed.), Modern Prostheses in Anglo-American Commodity Cultures. Manchester University Press
• McGuire, C., & Carel, H. (2019). The Visible and the Invisible: Disability, Assistive Technology, and Stigma. In D. Wasserman, & A. Cureton (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Disability (598-615). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190622879.013.14

Journal Article

• McGuire, C. (2024). Who Invented the Possum? What Historians Can Learn from Disabled Innovation in Britain's Responaut Communities. Technology and Culture, 65(1), 89-116. https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a920517
• McGuire, C., & Martin, J. D. (2023). Revenge of the Nerds. Physics in Perspective, 25, 169-172. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-023-00304-3
• Malpass, A., Mcguire, C., & Macnaughton, J. (2022). ‘The body says it’: the difficulty of measuring and communicating sensations of breathlessness. Medical Humanities, 48(1), 63-75. https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2019-011816
• Binnie, K., McGuire, C., & Carel, H. (2021). Objects of safety and imprisonment: Breathless patients’ use of medical objects in a palliative setting. Journal of Material Culture, 26(2), 122-141. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359183520931900
• McGuire, C., Macnaughton, J., & Carel, H. (2020). The Color of Breath. Literature and Medicine, 38(2), 233-238. https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2020.0015
• McGuire, C. (2019). ‘X-rays don't tell lies’: the Medical Research Council and the measurement of respiratory disability, 1936–1945. British Journal for the History of Science, 52(3), 447-465. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007087419000232
• McGuire, C. (2019). Dust to dust. The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 7(5), 383-384. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2213-2600%2819%2930116-x
• McGuire, C. A. (2019). The categorisation of hearing loss through telephony in inter-war Britain. History and Technology, 35(2), 138-155. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2019.1652435
• Virdi, J., & McGuire, C. (2018). “Phyllis M. Tookey Kerridge and the Science of Audiometric Standardization in Britain”. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007087417000929