Dr Laura Robson-Mainwaring

About

Laura works in the Modern Britain team in the Collections Expertise and Engagement department at The National Archives, providing advice to users wishing to access its collections and encouraging engagement with health records.

Laura has a research interest in branding in the medical marketplace, and disability history – primarily focused on the thalidomide scandal. She enjoys drawing on the diverse collection of records held at the archives to uncover emerging ideas around society, morality and public health provision throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

She frequently writes blogs on many aspects of the history of public health policy, health education, nursing and the cataloguing of First World War medical records.

Research activity

Laura is a member of the Royal Historical Society and the Social Society for the History of Medicine. She holds a PhD from the University of Leicester and a MSc in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine from Imperial College London. Her PhD thesis examined the advertising, branding, and packaging of pharmaceutical products between 1870 and 1920. This was part of a collaborative PhD studentship about selling health, funded by the AHRC and the Society of Apothecaries. Laura’s latest article on the medical profession’s relationship with branded medicines was published in 2024 by the Manchester University Press as part of an edited collection looking at myth and misinformation.

Before joining The National Archives Laura was a British Society for the History of Science Engagement Fellow, working in collaboration with the George Marshall Medical Museum and the University of Worcester on a project to uncover the local response to the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. Since joining The National Archives she has carried out public engagement relating to the state records concerning the outbreak. In 2021 Laura co-curated the exhibition 1920s: Beyond the Roar, focusing on emerging ideas around society, morality and public health provision.

Laura’s research is currently focused on the relationship between limb-fitting centres and thalidomide survivors in the 1960s and 70s. She was recently in receipt of a Strategic Research Fund grant for the project ‘“To complain is a complete waste of time”: Uncovering Histories of the Thalidomide Children in the Government Archives’, which resulted in the creation of a Thalidomide Collections Network. She is the lead TNA supervisor on the AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships ‘British State Provision of Prosthetic Limbs and the Two World Wars’ with the University of Leeds (2020-2024), as well as the AHRC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Partnership ‘Reconstructing BSE: Government Policy and Public Health across Humans and Animals’ with the University of Leeds (2020-2024).

Laura has an interest in cataloguing and archives. She currently manages the volunteer cataloguing project “MH 106: First World War Medical Records” and is undertaking an archival course with the University of Dundee.