Madeleine Sheahan

Madeleine is a PhD student in the History of Science and Medicine. Her research examines the social history of female healthcare and the variability of local medical marketplaces in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Italy. She is particularly interested in the relationship between midwifery and pharmacology, with a focus on the therapeutic activities of lay women who operated on the periphery of conventional academic, monastic, and guild settings. Animated by questions of gender, consumer demands, and embodied knowledge, her research seeks to advance the historical understanding of how female healthcare was practiced, organized, and gendered in early modern medical markets.

Madeleine is originally from Toronto, Canada, and completed her BA with honours in Renaissance Studies from the University of Toronto. Her undergraduate thesis investigated the implementation and maintenance of ‘health codes’ within early modern female charitable institutionsin the northern Italian city of Bologna.