Histories of Fertility and Infertility:
Premodern Experiences and Modern Resonances
Histories of Fertility and Infertility:
Premodern Experiences and Modern Resonances
Who We Are
We are historians based in the Department of Archaeology and History at the University of Exeter. Our research focuses on the history of fertility and infertility in the medieval period (Catherine) and the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (Sarah). As part of this, we are interested in how modern readers respond to historical experiences of fertility and we’ve held.
This project, funded by an AHRC Impact Accelerator award, shares some of these historical stories about infertility and pregnancy loss. We hope you find it interesting – and if you did, we would like to hear from you!
Professor Catherine Rider
Exeter Profile Page: https://arch-history.exeter.ac.uk/history/profile/index.php?username=crr205
Email: c.r.rider@exeter.ac.uk
LinkedIn: Catherine Rider
Instagram: @catherineridermedieval
Open Access Article: Catherine Rider, ‘The Medieval Biological Clock? Gendered Reproductive Aging in Medieval Western Medicine’, Journal of Aging Studies 64 (2023), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890406522000743?via%3Dihub
Professor Sarah Toulalan
Exeter Profile Page: https://arch-history.exeter.ac.uk/history/profile/index.php?username=sdtoulal
Email: s.d.toulalan@exeter.ac.uk
LinkedIn: Toulalan Sarah Open Access Article: Sarah Toulalan, ‘”Elderly Years Cause a Total Dispaire of Conception”: Old Age, Sex and Infertility in Early Modern England’, Social History of Medicine 16 (2016), https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/_Elderly_years_cause_a_Total_dispaire_of_Conception_old_age_sex_and_infertility_in_early_modern_England/29836529