Dr Catherine Mills

Senior Lecturer

History University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Dr Catherine Mills

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About me

Catherine Mills graduated from the Universities of Birmingham and Exeter. She joined history at Stirling in 2009 after having successfully completed a Wellcome funded post doctorial fellowship exploring the relationship between the regulatory politics of clean air and respiratory health in post war Britain at the Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter. Catherine was programme director for the MA Environmental History & Policy and MRes Historical Research (Environmental History) 2010 – 2013, and both created and directed the successful MSc Environment, Heritage and Policy 2013 – 2019. She was also Deputy Director for Centre for Environmental History and Policy (later Centre for Environment, Heritage, and Policy) 2010 -2014 followed by Director 2014-2019.

Research (4)

Catherine has a research background in the historical management and control of unhealthy environments with an emphasis on both the urban atmosphere and the underground workplace in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain. Since moving to Stirling, the emphasis of Catherine’s research has shifted towards post-industrial landscapes and the cultural and social value of these marginal and edgeland spaces with a particular emphasis on former colliery sites. She is a passionate advocate of both public engagement and interdisciplinary study. Her research is strongly community facing and combines traditional archival material with geo-archaeological, ecological and environmental investigation, and ethnographic and sociological approaches. Catherine’s current project, Coalscapes and Communities: Understanding post-industrial landscapes in a zero-carbon future, in partnership with the National Mining Museum Scotland, combines environmental history, sociology, ecology and the creative arts. The study proposes and exploration of community experience, perception and understanding of five former Scottish colliery sites and the characteristics that underpin their construction, set against the current drive towards a carbon zero economy. Catherine’s first monograph explored the health and safety regulation of the British mining industries, 1800-1914. She has also published on the occupational health of Cornish miners, urban air pollution and former mining landscapes. Catherine is the creator of the Landscape Legacies of Coal App. This is an expanding series of community produced and curated heritage walks, free to download to a mobile phone, that narrate the story of Scottish coal mining through the medium of, and active engagement with, former colliery sites and their associated communities.

Projects

Industrial Devon
PI: Dr Catherine Mills
Funded by: Strathmartine Trust

Environmental and Occupational Exposure to Heavy Metals Poisoning: Scottish Lead Mining 1600 to 1900
PI: Dr Catherine Mills
Funded by: The Carnegie Trust

Cornish Mining World Heritage Site grant Part Fund Mining History Congress Proceedings publication
PI: Dr Catherine Mills
Funded by: Cornish Mining World Heritage Site

Relationship between Historical Mining and Metallurgical Practices, Pollution and Health 1700-1950
PI: Dr Catherine Mills
Funded by: The Carnegie Trust

Outputs (25)

Outputs

Software

Mills C (2019) Landscape Legacies of Coal [Coal app]. [Mobile phone app] 2019. https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/faculties/arts-humanities/our-research/centre-for-environment-heritageand-policy/outreach-and-public-engagement/landscape-legacies-of-coal-mining


Conference Proceeding

Mills C & Claughton P (eds.) (2015) Mining Legacies: History, Archaeology and Environmental Impact. volume 19. Mining History, 3. The Proceedings of the NAMHO Conference 28th June - 1st July 2013, Aberystwyth, 29.06.2013-30.06.2013. Matlock Bath, Derbyshire: Peak District Mines Historical Society Ltd.


Conference Paper

Mills C & Claughton P (2015) Introduction: Mining Legacies. Mining legacies: the environmental, physical and cultural impact of mining, Aberystwyth. Mining History, 19 (3), pp. 1-2.


Book Chapter

Claughton PF & Mills C (2011) Introduction: Mining the future?. In: Claughton PF & Mills CJ (eds.) Mining Perspectives: The Proceedings of the Eighth International Mining History Congress 2009. Truro: Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape World Heritage Site, Cornwall Council, pp. 6-10. http://www.cornishmining.net/


Book Review

Mills C (2011) The Riches Beneath our Feet: How Mining Shaped Britain. Review of:
Geoff Coyle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 288 pp. 978-0199551293. Britain and the World, 4 (2), pp. 348-350. http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/brw.2011.0030; https://doi.org/10.3366/brw.2011.0030


Book Review

Mills C (2011) The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work and Play. Review of: The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play, James C. Whorton, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011, 448 pp. 978-0199605996. Journal of British Studies, 50 (2), pp. 536-537. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658258; https://doi.org/10.1086/658258


Book Review

Mills C (2007) Shock cities, the environmental transformation and reform of Manchester and Chicago. Review of: Shock Cities: The Environmental Transformation and Reform of Manchester and Chicago, Harold L. Platt, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 592 pp. ISBN-13: 978-0226670768. Social History, 32 (3), pp. 353-355.


Book Review

Mills C (2007) Inventing pollution: Coal, smoke and culture in Britain since 1800. Review of: Inventing Pollution: Coal, Smoke, and Culture in Britain Since 1800 (Series in Ecology & History), Peter Thorsheim, Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2006, 360 pp. ISBN 0-8214-1680-4. Social History, 32 (2), pp. 242-242.


Book Review

Mills C (2005) Landscapes of exposure, knowledge and illness in modern environments. Review of: Landscapes of Exposure, Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments, G. Mitman, M. Murphy and C. Sellers (eds), Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004, ISBN 0–226–53251–8.. Social History of Medicine, 18 (3), pp. 516-517. https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hki068


Book Review

Mills C (2005) Science at the borders, immigrant medical inspection and the shaping of the modern industrial labour force. Review of: Science at the Borders, Immigrant Medical Inspection and the Shaping of the Modern Industrial Labour Force, Amy L. Fairchild, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Pp. xiii + 385.ISBN 0 8018 7080.. Social History of Medicine, 18 (1), pp. 127-127. https://doi.org/10.1093/sochis/hki013