Claire Clark, Ph.D.

I’m a historian who teaches at the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine and current co-president of the Health Humanities Consortium. I am a tenured Associate Professor of Behavioral Science who is interested in the reparatory potential of historical and psychoanalytic thought.

I’m a person in recovery with public health training, not a clinician.

My scholarship spans cultural, biographical, and applied health history in the 20th and 21st century United States. My dissertation-turned-book, The Recovery Revolution, traced the industrialization of abstinence-based addiction treatment and inspired ongoing archival and oral history projects about therapeutic communities in the United States.

I am currently working on two new book-length projects. The first, co-authored with philosopher Dien Ho, is a cultural biography of anesthesiologist and bioethicist Henry Knowles Beecher. The second explores present-day consequences of historical divisions between the mental health and addictions fields.

My work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, and the Fulbright Foundation. I have been a visiting scholar or faculty member at the Hastings Center for Bioethics, the Harvard Macy Institute for Educators in the Health Professions, and the National Library of Medicine, among other educational institutions.

I mentor and teach pre-medical and medical students from various disciplinary backgrounds, as well as graduate (masters and doctoral) students in both History and Clinical and Translational Science. I founded and direct a unique pre-medical certificate program in Medical Behavioral Science. I also serve as associate director of an NIH-funded training program in Drug Abuse Research.

I’m passionate about the craft of the historical monograph and serve as the inaugural book reviews editor of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, a leading journal in its field for over a century.

I welcome conversation about any of these things; to make an appointment during my office hours, click here.