Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse
Welcome to Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse. Here you can find out more about the project, meet the team, keep updated with the project's publications and outputs, and follow our most recent findings through our research BLOG.
The Project
- Harnessing the curative power of the criminal corpse at a nineteenth-century execution
The criminal corpse, even when life had left the body, was still a powerful object. It had social and symbolic power, medicinal, judicial, political and scientific power. Started in 2011 and generously funded by the Wellcome Trust, this five-year project explores the criminal corpse from the disciplines of archaeology, medical and criminal history, folklore, literature and philosophy. It will reveal the ways in which the power of the criminal corpse was harnessed, by whom, and to what ends in Britain between the late seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
Project Themes
The project explores the criminal corpse through six key themes:
- William Hogarth's 'The Reward of Cruelty'
- Strand 1: The Criminal Justice System and the Criminal Corpse
- Strand 2: The Criminal Corpse in the Expanding Anatomical and Medical World of Georgian Society
- Strand 3: Placing the Criminal Corpse
- Strand 4: The Dead Sustaining Life: Criminal Corpses in European Medicine and Magic, 1700-1900
- Strand 5: The Criminal Corpse in Pieces
- Strand 6: The Criminal Corpse Remembered: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Power, Agency, Values and Ethics
Project Staff
Professor Sarah Tarlow, University of Leicester (Project director)
Professor Owen Davies, University of Hertfordshire
Dr Elizabeth Hurren, University of Leicester
Professor Peter King, University of Leicester
Dr Shane McCorristine, University of Leicester
Dr Floris Tomasini, University of Leicester
Dr Zoe Dyndor, University of Leicester
Dr Francesca Matteoni, University of Hertfordshire
Dr Richard Ward, University of Leicester
Dr Emma Battell Lowman, University of Leicester
Rachel Bennett, University of Leicester
- The Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse project is generously funded by the Wellcome Trust
