On 1 June 1869, John Murphy was admitted to the Rockwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Kingston, Ontario, as Patient #468. The massive limestone complex on the shore of Lake Ontario had been under construction since the autumn of 1859, built by gangs of convicts from nearby Kingston Penitentiary, and was completed a year … Continue reading John Murphy
Blog
“Relaunch!”
A few things to look for as you make your way around the website...
Sidelined
"My memory is that I made it back to the bedroom as if I had become a new team member on Floor is Lava. It probably looked much worse in real life."
Postcolonial Theory and the GMM Project
"The multiplicity of colonial relations being enacted and negotiated in asylums and jails is truly astounding."
The “Limerick Girls”
"What is most disappointing here is that these harmful stereotypes are being communicated and perpetuated by the very people who are supposed to be welcoming and supporting the newly arrived emigrants."
When Work Feeds Your Addiction: Researching with Ancestry.com
"Many academics recognize that working with Ancestry.com and genealogical data can become quite addictive. That’s me: I am one of those historians."
Not Feeling ‘Excel’lent
"My confession: I don’t know how to use Excel."
The Number Paradox
"We did it. We found the Holy Grail."
The Brothers Douglas
"Sometimes, as a way to re-envision the lived reality of the people we write about, I play a little game..."
Prioritizing Propensities
"Invariably, I will ignore whatever outline I came up with earlier in the process."
Irish Studies x Food Studies
"Food is politics; knowledge of and access to it, and what constitutes 'healthy' or 'health-promoting' food, is a privilege beyond measure."
Collecting and Organizing Data: The GMM Project’s Guiding Principles
Early on in the project, we realized we needed specific guidelines for the collection of data from very different archival sources.
Game, Dataset, Match!
"So, what are we going to do with all those entries? How are we going to analyse them?"
The Season of the Grant
"There is an art to grant writing... It takes a different set of skills."
Research Radar – Sadie Gilker
"Oh my god. Just ask for help. You’re not supposed to know it all."
Briefly, at the crossroads of women’s health, mental health, and public health
"To me, the overlap between some of the symptoms of 'madness' in the asylums and untreated thyroid disease is striking."
Archival Love
"So, as a bit of Canadian Thanksgiving Weekend-filler, I thought I would make a completely subjective-and-not-at-all-scientific list..."
Reducing Costs or Occupational Therapy?
"Some patients who exhibited very bad behaviour or who were 'excessively filthy in their habits' were sent to 'the Basement'."
“You-Know-Who”
"I don’t think anyone in our project deserves to be made into a Voldemort."
Archive Rituals
"[D]oing archival research in Cuba prepared me for a global pandemic."
Briefly, on Dual Pandemics and Archives of Feelings
"I see the materials with which the team has engaged...as a repository of feelings and emotions."
Foucault-ed
"Like clockwork, a haunting happened again in the earliest days of the GMM Project."
Gender, Migration, and Madness Research Project 