Charlotte Rich

Charlotte Rich is a PhD student in the History of Science and Medicine Program at Yale University. She examines the transnational history of reproductive healthcare and migration in the mid-nineteenth century across Ireland, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Her research centers the experiences of working-class Irish migrant women to consider how they engaged with and navigated various urban institutions – including hospitals, charities, workhouses, and prisons – to procure medical services. She also explores how Irish women’s interactions with physicians, philanthropists, and other authorities produced and popularized increasingly nativist and classist ideologies about Irish women’s sexuality, bodies, and lifestyles during this period. Charlotte is invested in how studying historical inequities in healthcare can shed light on our current systems and practices.