Kaitlyn Carter

I am a second year PhD student working under the supervision of Dr. Jenna Healey and Dr. Jane Errington. I hold a Master of Arts from Western University (2021) and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from Brock University (2020). My master’s cognate, which I affectionately deemed a “pandemic project,” focused on the relationship between national identity and the ideal of Canadian masculinity through the medium of sport during the 1972 Summit Series. This research has since been featured in the edited collection Reaching the Summit published in 2022. However, my main interest area lies in the history of emotions and its relation to experiences of medical treatment in the nineteenth century. 

My proposed dissertation focuses on the experience and emotional performance of pain by British soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. By placing my research into a transnational context, I intend to examine how emerging nineteenth century ideas of nation, race, and embodied gender shaped the emotional realities of men fighting for and alongside the British Empire. 

Outside of academia, I am a dedicated public historian having worked at both Fort George National Historic Site and McFarland House in Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON; the Brown Homestead in St. Catharines, ON; and most recently Fanshawe Pioneer Village in my hometown of London, ON. When not working, you can probably find me reading, baking, or building Lego.