Funded by a five-year Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (2013-18), this project explores the manner in which notions of balance have shaped approaches to lifestyle, health and disease in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Interlocking strands of the research address how and why balance has become such a prominent feature of debates about health and well-being particularly in relation to mental health and working lives, health and illness across the life-course, diet and chronic disease, and the natural environment. Individual projects supported by the grant focus on the histories of work-life balance, fatigue, relaxation therapies, diabetes, gender and mental illness, diet and masculinity, and health in middle age.
In collaboration with colleagues in environmental science, medicine and psychology, we are also committed to the dissemination of our research findings through engagement and impact activities designed to enhance public discussions about the role of balance in shaping patterns of health and disease.