Rebecca Wynter

Rebecca is a Golestan Fellow at NIAS during 2025-2026.

Dr Rebecca Wynter FHEA FRHistS, is a historian of medicine and mental health, and of religion. She is Researcher in Health Humanities at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and co-ordinator of the Pulse Network. Her research, publications and other activities have been supported by funding from, amongst others, Wellcome, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, UKRI), the British Academy, Central England Quakers, the University of Manchester and Queen Mary, University of London. Her work centres on the histories of psychiatry, mental health, learning disability, and neurosurgery, of first responders, and of First World War medicine and disability. She has worked with museums, developing and curating exhibitions, and with community-based groups on public history projects.

Dr Wynter’s work cuts across disciplines and between the academic and public space, attracting around £820,000 in funding and featuring in a variety of museums, publications and other venues. She has been awarded the 2025/6 Golestan Fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS-KNAW). She has a range of teaching experience and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. She is part of the Executive Committee of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, and is now the Policy Officer, having been the Roy Porter Prize Chair since 2018. She is also a founder member of the Mental Health Humanities initiative at the University of Birmingham (UK), and co-convenes the Mental Health Humanities Researcher Network (MHHRN) and the Mental Health Histories Special Interest Group for the COST Action, National, International and Transnational Histories of Healthcare, 1850-2000 (EuroHealthHist).

Rebecca arrived at UvA in 2023, when her project, ‘Policing Mental Disorder in London and Amsterdam, c.1945-2020’ was selected for its originality and potential to inform policy. Before UvA, she was Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Birmingham. Most recently she was entrusted to research historic incidents of so-called ‘aversion therapy’ used for sexual reorientation (usually on men who had sex with men) by University of Birmingham psychology and psychiatry staff in the 1960s and 1970s. Prior to that, she co-designed and was named researcher on the AHRC-funded project, “Forged by Fire’: burns injury and identity in Britain, c.1800-2000’, a unique collaboration between medical historians at the University of Birmingham, urban historians at Leeds Beckett University, and freelance artists, writers, and teachers.

Having also held research and visiting scholar positions at the Universities of Manchester and Strathclyde, and Worcestershire World War 100, since 2012 Rebecca has had a sustained connection with Woodbrooke and Quakers in Britain. She was until 2025 editor of the learned journal, Quaker Studies. She continues to teach and supervise postgraduate Quaker Studies students.