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Dr Alice M Reid BA MSc PhD

Senior Research Associate, The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure
Director of Studies, Churchill College

Historical demographer & medical historian, working on infant and child health and mortality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Biography

Career

  • 1992-1995: Research Assistant at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, University of Cambridge
  • 1995-1999: PhD University of Cambridge
  • 1999-2003: Research Fellow at St John's College, University of Cambridge
  • 2003-: Senior Research Associate, Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, University of Cambridge

Qualifications

  • BA University of Oxford
  • MSc London School of Economics
  • PhD University of Cambridge

Research

Mobility and demographic measurement

My current project (funded by Leverhulme) considers the impact of housing conditions and associated variables on infant and young child mortality in late-Victorian and Edwardian Belfast. Individual 1911 census returns provide both cross-sectional housing data and retrospective mortality data, which is being supplemented by record linkage via street directories to the 1901 census allowing assessment of the impact of migration on the measurements derived. It is suspected that using time-specific data with longitudinal data creates biases in certain dimensions of the health-housing relationship and the study hopes to identify the nature and extent of these and, accounting for them, to re-assess current knowledge.

Infant and child health and mortality in late nineteenth and early twentieth century UK; The demography of Victorian Scotland.

Recent research has concentrated on the analysis of longitudinal data from notification of births registers made for and embellished by health visitors, for early twentieth century Derbyshire. Recent grants have been awarded to construct and analyse a longitudinal data set by linking births, deaths, and marriages from civil registers with census returns for selected places in Scotland, for the second half of the nineteenth century (ESRC 2003-6), and to extend this with information on doctors certifying deaths and the effects on patterns in registered causes of death. (Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine 2007-8).

Research questions:

  • Hazards modelling of the influences on risks of infant and child mortality, including cause-specific mortality.
  • The relative importance of social class and environment in influencing early age mortality.
  • Patterns and prevalence of breast-feeding in early twentieth century England, and how breast-feeding affected mortality and morbidity.
  • The role of health professionals (doctors, midwives, health visitors) in survival in infancy and early childhood.
  • Health professionals and the registration of causes of death.
  • The influences on stillbirth mortality.
  • Linking and analysis of demographic data.
  • The impact of mobility on the use of retrospective demographic measures.

Main data sources:

  • Anonymised sample of the 1911 'fertility' census.
  • Notifications of Births registers, containing health visitors' records for individual infants up to the age of five.
  • Longitudinal records created from linked censuses and civil registers for Scotland.
  • 1911 and 1901 census enumerators' books for Belfast, and Belfast street directories.

Related research interests

  • Social and spatial differences in fertility.
  • The effect of migration of fertility and mortality.

Publications

Selected publications

  • Alice Reid, Eilidh Garrett & Simon Szreter (forthcoming 2013), 'Residential mobility and child mortality in early twentieth century Belfast', in New approaches of death in the cities during the health transition, Diego Ramiro, Michel Oris, Lucia Pozzi (eds), Springer.
  • Alice Reid (forthcoming, Spring 2013), 'Mrs Killer and Dr Crook: birth attendants and birth outcomes in early twentieth century Derbyshire', Medical History.
  • Alice Reid & Eilidh Garrett, 'Doctors and the causes of neonatal death in nineteenth century Scotland', Annales de Demographie Historique (forthcoming 2012).
  • Eilidh Garrett, Alice Reid & Simon Szreter, 'Fertility and child mortality in a household setting: comparative perspectives from UK censuses, 1861-1921', Popolazione e Storia (forthcoming 2012).
  • Alice Reid (2012), 'Birth attendants and midwifery practice in early twentieth century Derbyshire', Social History of Medicine, 25(2): 380-399, doi: 10.1093/shm/hkr138. Link to paper.
  • Chris Galley, Eilidh Garrett, Ros Davies and Alice Reid (2011b), 'Living same-name siblings and English historical demography: A reply to Peter Razzell', Local Population Studies 87: 70-77.
  • Chris Galley, Eilidh Garrett, Ros Davies and Alice Reid (2011), 'Same-name siblings and British historical demography', Local Population Studies 86: 15-36.
  • Alice Reid, Ros Davies, Andrew Blaikie and Eilidh Garrett (2006), 'Vulnerability among illegitimate children in nineteenth century Scotland', Annales de Demographie Historique no. 111, 2006-1: 89-113.
  • Alice Reid (2006), 'Health visitors and enlightened motherhood', in Infant mortality: a continuing social problem? Eilidh Garrett, Chris Galley, Nicola Shelton and Robert Woods (eds), Ashgate, pp.191-210.
  • Alice Reid, Ros Davies & Eilidh Garrett (2006), 'Nineteenth century Scottish demography from linked censuses and civil registers: a 'sets of related individuals' approach', History & Computing , 14(1+2) 2002 (publ. 2006): 61-86. doi: 10.3366/hac.2002.14.1-2.61
  • Alice Reid (2005), 'The influences on the health and mortality of illegitimate children in Derbyshire, 1917-1922', in Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700-1920, Alysa Levene, Thomas Nutt and Samantha Williams, Palgrave.
  • Alice Reid (2005), 'The effects of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic on infant and child health in Derbyshire'. Medical History, 49(1): 29-54. Link to paper.
  • Alice Reid (2004), 'Child care and maternal health: intermediaries between socio-economic and environmental factors and infant and child mortality?' in The Determinants of Infant and Child Mortality in Past European Populations, Marco Breschi and Lucia Pozzi (eds.) Udine, Forum, pp.139-152.
  • Alice Reid (2002), 'Infant feeding and post neonatal mortality in Derbyshire, England, in the early twentieth century'. Population Studies, 56(2): 151-166. Link to paper.
  • Alice Reid (2001), 'Health visitors and child health: did health visitors have an impact?', Annales de Demographie Historique 2001-1: 117-137.
  • Alice Reid (2001), 'Neonatal mortality and stillbirths in Derbyshire in the early twentieth century', Population Studies 55(3): 213-232. Link to paper.
  • Eilidh Garrett, Alice Reid, Kevin Schűrer & Simon Szreter (2001), Changing family size in England and Wales: place, class and demography: 1891-1911, Cambridge University Press.
  • Alice Reid (1997), 'Locality or Class? Spatial and Social Differentials in Infant and Child Mortality in England and Wales, 1895-1911', in The Decline of Infant and Child Mortality: The European Experience: 1750-1990, C.A. Corsini & P.P. Viazzo (eds), Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 129-154.
  • Eilidh Garrett and Alice Reid (1995), 'Thinking of England and Taking Care: Family Building Strategies and Infant Mortality in England and Wales, 1891-1911', International Journal of Population Geography 1, pp.69-102. Link to paper.
  • Eilidh Garrett and Alice Reid (1994), 'Satanic mills, pleasant lands: spatial variation in women's work, fertility and infant mortality as viewed from the 1911 census', Historical Research 67, pp.157-177.

Teaching

  • Director of Studies in Geography for Churchill College & Fellow of Churchill College
  • Geography Tripos part 1B: Archival Methods in Geographical Research
  • Geography Tripos part 1B: Multivariate Methods in Geographical Research

External activities

  • Editor of the Journal Population Studies (2010 onwards)
  • British Society for Population Studies Council member
  • Member of Society for the Social History of Medicine
  • Member of the Economic History Society
  • Member of the British Society for Population Studies