2026 Colloquium Programme

UKAHN Colloquium 2026

Programme

9.15 Registration open with refreshments

Welcome 9.45

Vari Drennan, Colloquium 2026 convenor

Professor Claire Thurgate, Head of School of Nursing, Allied and Public Health, Kingston University

10.00-11.15 Panel 1. Theme of war

Jan-Thore Lockertsen, Eastern Front Sisters: Innocent Nurses or Ideological Actors?
Jane Brooks, “Oh that freak unit! You need not bother, you Sisters will never join it”: Female nurses and the No. 1 Mobile Military Hospital in the Desert War, 1941-1944.
Vari Drennan, Nurses awarded the Royal Red Cross in World War Two

11.15 Refreshment break

11.35-12.25 Round table. Theme of biography and sources

Janet Hargreaves, Looking for Molly,

Judi Pettigrew, “One of the chief methods of treatment”: the writings of nurse occupational therapists, 1930s–1950s,

Gavin Wilk, ‘The blessed peace of a vacation was shattered’: the war experiences of nurse Mary E.  Gladwin,

Suzanne Askham, Publishing a 1920s nursing memoir: challenges of authentic narrative

12.30-13.00 Poster presentations

Dianne Yarwood, The AIDS pandemic; Caring for those affected by HIV/AIDS and reflections of nurses and carers from the 1980’s onward.
Hannah Amos, Comparison as the Thief of Joy: Making Room to Celebrate More
Antonia Harland-Lang & Kai Flynn, Moved to Care: Stories of Nursing and Migration – a new exhibition at the Royal College of Nursing Library and Museum

Lunch 13.00

13.45 -15.00 Panel 2. Theme of hospitals

Claire Chatterton, A period of much mental strain, care and harassing anxiety’ Typhoid fever outbreaks at the Chester Asylum 1878 and 1895-6
Victoria Sweetmore, “We were dismantling more than buildings”: Mental health nurses, asylum closure, and professional identity in England, 1980–2000
Elizabeth Mason-Whitehead, From first to last: the story of an isolation hospital and the matron who nursed it back to health

Refreshment break 15.00

15.15-16.30 Panel 3. Theme of communities (nursing of communities, communities of nurses)

Nadzieja Kolodziejski, Caring for the Nation: Women, Nursing, and the Politics of Recognition in Revolutionary Ireland
Che Kelly, Pathways to Male Nursing: African and Caribbean Perspectives in Postwar Britain
Sue Campbell, Challenges of remote nursing on the St Kilda archipelago from the 1800’s until evacuation in 1930

Closing words 16.30-16.35

Alannah Tomkins & Vari Drennan