Department of History
Frances Long
Research
Research
Although most historical research looks at the waking world, sleep has its own rich history which is only beginning to be explored. My research focusses on the sleep of infants and children in the long eighteenth century. Individuals' sleep-needs vary over the course of the life-cycle, and the way these are accommodated by households and wider societies change over time.
Funded by WRoCAH and AHRC, the project brings together work on the histories of sleep, emotion, medicine, childhood, and the family, using a mixture of published and unpublished sources, as well as material and visual evidence.
Papers and publications
Conference papers
• ‘The Time of their Lives: Social Life on the Deathbed’, Distance 2020: Postgraduate Conference for Students of the Long Eighteenth Century, University of York, August 2020
• ‘Crossing Borders: Sleep and Dying in the Long Eighteenth Century’, MEMSA, University of Durham, July 2020
• ‘ “Linton had a very bad night”: The Sleep of the Heir to the Earl of Traquair, 1783, Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies Postgraduate Forum, University of York, April 2020
• ‘‘The dairy maid satt up’: Night-Time Care for Ill Children in the Later Eighteenth Century’, International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Conference, University of Edinburgh, July 2019
• ‘Sleep as a Barometer of Health (Leah Astbury)’, Medical Humanities Postgraduate Conference, University of Exeter, June 2019
• ‘Space, Sleep, and Childcare: Bedtimes in Maria Nugent’s Journal of a Voyage to Jamaica, (1837)’, International PhD Conference in History, Lund-York-Bielefeld, University of Bielefeld, June 2019
• “Papa speaks to me so nicely in an evening”: Deathbed Sleep in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Annual PhD Conference, University of York, September 2018
• To Feed or Not To Feed? Or, How to Train Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night’, British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Postgraduate Conference, Aix-Marseille Université, September 2018
• ‘Sentimental Sleeping: Tracing ‘the inward fits’, 1767-1784’, PhD Bielefeld-Lund-York Conference, University of York, June 2018
• ‘Children’s Sleep in the Eighteenth Century’, Unravelled: The History of Drugs and Sleep Disorders, Queen Mary’s University of London, June 2017
External activities
External activities
Academic activities
• February 2019 – September 2020 – founder and chair, York Postgraduate Interdisciplinary Forum (previously York Postgraduate Summer Forum)
• September 2019 – co-organiser, New Directions in Nineteenth-Century Periodical Studies, University of Leeds
• September 2018 – July 2019 – co-chair, Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies Postgraduate Forum, University of York, 2018-19 academic year
• October 2018 – chair, WRoCAH annual PhD conference committee 2018, University of York
Pastoral activities
• November 2018 – present – contributor and co-organiser on the ‘How to Thrive and Survive During Your PhD’ project (previously 'How to Survive Your PhD (and Enjoy It!)')
Outreach
• November 2019 – co-organiser, ‘Identities in the Eighteenth Century’ Study Day, for sixth-form students at the Vale and Downland Museum
• January 2019 – co-organiser, Eighteenth-Century Study Day for sixth-form students at the Vale and Downland Museum
• June – November 2018 – Collaborator on the board game ‘The Grand Tour of Europe’, University of York
