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 Dr.
David Wright
Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine
Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioural Neurosciences,
and Department of History
McMaster University
David Wright was born in Montreal and raised in London,
Ontario. He read History at McGill University where he received his
BA (Honours) in European History and MA in Modern British History. While
studying for his undergraduate and Master’s degree, he worked
for several summers as a research assistant at the Children’s
Psychiatric Research Institute, outside of London. This experience not
only exposed him to the fascinating field of behavioural psychology,
but also to the social and familial factors involved in the institutionalisation
and discharge back to the community of ‘developmentally handicapped’
children and adolescents.
In 1990 he left Montreal for the University of Oxford, where he merged
his twin interests of modern history and developmental disability, by
writing a doctoral dissertation (in the History Faculty) on the establishment
of the first English-language institution for ‘idiots’ in
the Western World. His expanded and revised doctoral thesis was published
by Oxford University Press under the title Mental Disability in
Victorian England: the Earlswood Asylum, 1847-1901 (2001). He remained
in Oxford from 1994 to 1996 as a Wellcome Trust Post-Doctoral Research
Fellow in the History of Medicine completing two thematic edited volumes:
(with Anne Digby) From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency: Historical Perspectives
on People with Learning Disabilities (Routledge, 1996) and (with
Peter Bartlett) Outside the Walls of the Asylum: Historical Perspectives
on Care in the Community, 1750-2000 (Athlone Press, 1999).
After teaching for three years at the University of Nottingham, David
returned to Canada in 1999, having being appointed the Hannah Chair
in the History of Medicine at McMaster University. This unique position
carried with it a joint appointment in the Department of History and
the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioural Neurosciences. During
the last four and a half years, he has continued to pursue his interests
in the history of developmental disability, the history of mental illness,
and the history of asylums, but in broader trans-national perspectives.
These new initiatives culminated in his most recent publication (with
the late Roy Porter), The Confinement of the Insane: International
Perspectives, 1800-1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
His current research projects involve a Canadian Institutes of Health
Research grant on the historical epidemiology of mental disorders in
Canada, c.1850-1900, and (with Professor John Weaver) a Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council grant on the history of suicide in Australia
and New Zealand, c. 1870-1970. His interdisciplinary research interests
find him teaching in four programs and three different faculties at
McMaster University, including courses on the history of health &
medicine in Canada as well as social sciences & humanities perspectives
on mental health.
David lives in Hamilton with his wife, Mona Gupta, and their 1 year
old daughter, Naomi.
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