My research examines the history of patient-staff relationships in mental institutions, in both France and the U.S. I explore the limitations and failures of past mental health reforms, as well as scientific innovation, creative expression, and community-building inside psychiatric facilities.
Currently, I am working on two book projects. The first is a study of how deinstitutionalization affected patients with intellectual disabilities at Indiana’s Central State Hospital in the 1990s (with Emily Beckman and Modupe Labode). This project was inspired by the patient-produced newsletter, The DDU Review. The second examines the roles played by art and science in the reform of French psychiatry at the turn of the twentieth century, focusing on Villejuif Asylum near Paris.
