Helena Constance Aeberli

Research Topic

‘Great and dangerous disorders’: diet, disease, and disordered eating in early modern England.

My research explores diet, disease, and disordered eating in early modern English medicine and culture. Falling within the fields of medical, cultural, and intellectual history, my research examines what ‘eating disorders’ meant to early modern people, before considering the cultural meanings and anxieties with which they became entangled. I therefore question the conventional depiction of eating disorders as a modern phenomenon, demonstrating that they were a significant source of concern in medical and moral discourse throughout the 1600s.

Supervisor: George Southcombe and Sloan Mahone

Academic Profile & Awards

I graduated with a first-class BA in History and Politics from Jesus College Oxford (2022), with a dissertation supervised by Dr Leif Dixon on sleep paralysis, sexuality, and the supernatural in early modern England. I also hold an MSt in Early Modern History from Jesus College Oxford (2023). I was awarded the Best Dissertation in Cohort Prize for my thesis ‘More beastliness than beauty: Gendering pica in Early Modern England’, which forms the basis of my DPhil research.

My DPhil is generously co-funded by the OOC AHRC-DTP, the Clarendon Fund, and All Souls College.

Publications

I've written about the history of the body, food, and gender for a variety of public-facing publications, such as this essay on Mary Toft for the London Magazine and this piece on the future of food for Dazed. A History Today article on pica and pregnancy cravings is forthcoming. 

I also write criticism, such as this review of Ruby Tandoh's 'All Consuming: Why We Eat The Way We Eat Today' and this review of Caroline Crampton's 'A History of Hypochondria', both in the LA Review of Books. More information and my portfolio can be found on my website.