Academic staff

To understand the world we live in, it is crucial to know how it has been shaped by science, technology and medicine. Dr Quirke's specialist teaching focuses on the history of medical knowledge, practice, and associated technologies, while her broader teaching considers the wider socio-economic and political context within which they developed, in particular the expansion of the medical market and the evolution of modern warfare.

Modules taught

Undergraduate

• Medicine and War (3rd Year)
• Brave New Worlds: Evolution and its Discontents, c.1850-2000 (2nd Year)
• History and Documents (2nd Year)
• The Rise of the Modern World (1st Year)
• Medicine and Society, c. 1650-1914 (1st Year)
• Making History: Theory, Methods and Sources (1st Year)
• Work-Based Learning Module (2nd Year)

Postgraduate

• Key Concepts and Mehods in History of Medicine
• Worlds of Risk: Technology, Health and the Environment
• Independent Study Module (Combined History/History of Medicine strand)
• History MA Dissertation (Combined History/History of Medicine strand)

Supervision

PhD supervision

Dr Quirke has supervised a number of projects at both Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels, on various aspects of the history of modern medicine, as well as on the history of the First and Second World Wars.

At PhD level, to date Dr Quirke has supervised to completion three projects, one as Second Supervisor (Jenny Wright, 'Public Health Women Doctors in England, 1974 to 1991: a case study', 2015), two as Director. Both were externally funded, the first by a Wellcome Trust Programme Grant (no 09568/Z/11/A) on which Dr Quirke has been co-investigator (Gilmour-Hamilton, 'A Cohort of One: Oral History and Cancer Research in Britain, 1970-2010', 2016); the second by an AHRC CDA with the Science Museum (Rushmore, 'Uses and Misuses of Chemicals in the British Home, c. 1930s-1980s', 2017). 

Dr Quirke is also currently acting as Second Supervisor to another Wellcome Trust-funded PhD scholarship (Jane Freebody, '"What did they do all day?" Patient work, psychiatry and society in France and England, 1900-1940'. 

PhD examination

Dr Quirke has acted as internal and external examiner on a number of occasions, in Britain and abroad. Topics examined have included the history of smallpox in 18th-century England; the Association of Parents of Backward Children and the legacy of eugenics in Britain, 1946-1960; the history of antimetabolites and their contribution to a rational approach to chemotherapy, 1935-1955.  

History of science, technology and medicine in Britain, France and the USA in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with a special focus on the history of biomedicine, drug therapies and the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr Quirke's doctoral thesis compared the development of collaborative research networks between scientists and pharmaceutical companies in Britain and France in the twentieth century. It was published with Routledge as Collaboration in the Pharmaceutical Industry. Her current research areas are:

• The history of pharmaceutical R&D, focusing on the history of drug treatments for chronic diseases and the impact of drug safety regulation.
• The history of cancer chemotherapy, from the perspective of the the patients who have experinced it as well as the scientists and clinicians responsible for its development.
• The material culture of biomedicine, from bench, to bedside, and public engagement.

Dr Quirke was a co-applicant on a Wellcome Trust Strategic Award on 'Healthcare in Public and Private' (2007-2012), and has been co-investigator on a Wellcome Trust Programme Grant on 'Subjects' Narratives of Medical Research in Europe' (09568/Z/11/A). Recently she was awarded a grant from the Scientific Instrument Society for a study entitled: 'From Pharmaceutical Innovation to Public Engagement: Stephen Carter and teh Micrarium in Buxton'.  

Books

• Quirke V, Slinn J, Perspectives on twentieth-century pharmaceuticals , Peter Lang (2010)
  ISBN: 9783039109203
  Abstract One of the most striking features of the twentieth century has been the rapid growth of the pharmaceutical industry and the large increases in the use and consumption of its products. This trend began in the first half of the century, but accelerated most sharply after the Second World War, when the creation of national systems of healthcare created mass markets for drugs. The industry then assumed a major economic, social and political significance, and became one of the most highly regulated sectors of the economy, attracting the attention of industry analysts as well as academics. This volume brings together a collection of papers exploring and reflecting upon some of the significant strands in the current studies of pharmaceuticals in the twentieth century. They touch upon many of the issues that are matters of concern and debate today, and their international and multidisciplinary approaches enrich our understanding of an object, of an industry, and of a process that are at the heart of our highly medicalized contemporary societies.

Journal articles

• Quirke V, 'Imperial Chemical Industries and Craig Jordan, “the First Tamoxifen Consultant,” 1960s-1990s'
  Ambix 67 (3) (2020) pp.289-307
  ISSN: 0002-6980 eISSN: 1745-8234
  Abstract

  This paper examines the relationship between Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), the company that discovered tamoxifen, and Dr Craig Jordan, who played a major part in its success as a breast cancer drug, and who worked as a consultant for the company, but without ever being paid a consultancy fee. Instead, ICI funded junior staff working in his laboratory on topics of his choice. They later paid his expenses as an expert witness in patent-litigation cases, as a result of which the US became a major lucrative market for tamoxifen, and ICI’s other anti-cancer drugs. This case study illustrates that, like consultants, drugs play an important part at the boundary between the academic and industrial spheres. However, even if it is blurred, the boundary remains. Owing to the secrecy that often surrounds industrial research, this boundary may lead to a different understanding of what constitutes innovation, and to different narratives with regard to respective contributions.

  Website 
• Quirke V, Reed P, 'Chemistry, Consultants, and Companies, c. 1850-2000: Introduction'
  Ambix 67 (3) (2020) pp.207-213
  ISSN: 0002-6980 eISSN: 1745-8234
  Website 
• Quirke, VM, 'Tamoxifen from failed contraceptive pill to best-selling breast cancer medicine: a case-study in pharmaceutical innovation'
  Frontiers in Pharmacology 8 (2017)
  ISSN: 1663-9812 eISSN: 1663-9812
  Abstract Today, tamoxifen is one of the world’s best-selling hormonal breast cancer drugs. However, it was not always so. Compound ICI 46,474 (as it was first known) was synthesized in 1962 within a project to develop a contraceptive pill in the pharmaceutical laboratories of ICI (now part of AstraZeneca). Although designed to act as an anti-estrogen, the compound stimulated, rather than suppressed ovulation in women. This, and the fact that it could not be patented in the USA, its largest potential market, meant that ICI nearly stopped the project. It was saved partly because the team’s
  leader, Arthur Walpole, threatened to resign, and pressed on with another project: to develop tamoxifen as a treatment for breast cancer. Even then, its market appeared small, because at first it was mainly used as a palliative treatment for advanced breast cancer. An important turning point in tamoxifen’s journey from orphan drug to bestselling medicine occurred in the 1980s, when clinical trials showed that it was also useful as an adjuvant to surgery and chemotherapy in the early stages of the disease. Later, trials demonstrated that it could prevent its occurrence or re-occurrence in women at high risk of breast cancer. Thus, it became the first preventive for any cancer, helping to establish the broader principles of chemoprevention, and extending the market for tamoxifen and similar drugs further still. Using tamoxifen as a case study, this paper discusses the limits of the rational approach to drug design, the role of human actors, and the series of feedback loops between bench and bedside that underpins pharmaceutical innovation. The paper also highlights the complex evaluation and management of risk that are involved in all therapies, but more especially perhaps in life-threatening and emotion-laden diseases like cancer.Website 
• Quirke V, 'From pharmaceutical innovation to public engagement: Stephen Carter and the Micrarium in Buxton'
  Bulletin- Scientific Instrument Society 132 (2017) pp.18-22
  ISSN: 0956-8271
  Website 
• Quirke V, 'Tamoxifen'
  New Scientist x (3100) (2016)
  ISSN: 0262-4079
  Website 
• Quirke V, 'Targeting the American Market for Medicines, ca 1950s: ICI and Rhône-Poulenc compared'
  Bulletin of the History of Medicine 88 (4) (2014) pp.654-696
  ISSN: 0007-5140
  Abstract

  The forces that have shaped American medicine include a wide set of interrelated changes, among them the changing research, development, and marketing practices of the pharmaceutical industry. This article compares the research and development (R&D) and marketing strategies of the British group Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI, whose Pharmaceutical Division was spun off and merged with the Swedish company Astra to form AstraZeneca) and its French counterpart Rhône-Poulenc (now part of Sanofi-Aventis) in dealing with the American medical market. It examines how, in the process, the relationship between R&D and marketing was altered, and the firms themselves were transformed. The article also questions the extent to which their approaches to this market, one of the most significant markets for drugs in general, and for anticancer drugs in particular, became standardized in the period of "scientific marketing."

  Website 
• Quirke V, 'Foreign influences, national styles, and the creation of a modern pharmaceutical industry in Britain and France'
  Pharmacy in History 52 (3 & 4) (2010) pp.134-147
  ISSN: 0031-7047
  
• Quirke V, 'The material culture of British pharmaceutical laboratories in the golden age of drug discovery (c. 1935-75) '
  International Journal for the History of Engineering and Technology 79 (2) (2009) pp.280-299
  ISSN: 1758-1206
  Abstract At a time when pharmaceuticals were becoming one of the most successful science-based sectors in Britain and the British pharmaceutical industry was beginning to rank among the world's most innovative, c. 1945-1975, physical methods and electronic instrumentation revolutionised structural organic chemistry. Their introduction is described in three companies (Burroughs Wellcome Co., Glaxo, and Imperial Chemical Industries); when, how and why British pharmaceutical laboratories adopted these methods is examined. The impact they had on pharmaceutical innovation at that time is explored, and what this tells us about and, in turn, what can we learn from the material culture of British pharmaceutical laboratories in the Golden Age of Drug Discovery is discussed.Website 
• Quirke V, Gaudilliere J-P, 'The era of biomedicine: science, medicine, and public health in Britain and France after the second world war'
  Medical History 52 (4) (2008) pp.441-452
  ISSN: 0025-7273
  Abstract The relationship between medicine and the study of life is as old as medicine itself. Nevertheless, historians have highlighted the great transformation that took place in the nineteenth century when first physiology and then bacteriology became important resources for the classification, diagnosis, and treatment of human diseases.1 In that period, significant links developed between the sites specializing in biological experimentation (i.e. laboratories) on the one hand, and the places of healing (i.e. hospitals, dispensaries) and public health offices on the other. Together, they helped to fashion modern, professional medicine.2 However, many historical studies have also argued that this mobilization of biological knowledge exerted a limited impact on medical practice in general, and clinical practice in particular.Website 
• Quirke V, 'The changing role of chemistry in the twentieth century: scientists, instruments and pharmaceutical companies'
  Medical History 52 (4) (2008) pp.441-452
  ISSN: 0025-7273
  
• Quirke V, Gaudillere JP, 'The Era of Biomedicine: Science, Medicine, and Public Health in Britain and France After the Second World War'
  Medical History 52 (2008) pp.441-452
  ISSN: 0025-7273
  
• Quirke V, 'Putting theory into practice: James Black, receptor theory, and the development of the beta-blockers at ICI'
  Medical History 50 (1) (2006) pp.69-92
  ISSN: 0025-7273
  
• Quirke V, 'Making British cortisone: Glaxo and the development of corticosteroid drugs in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s'
  Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36 (4) (2005) pp.645-74
  ISSN: 1369-8486 eISSN: 1879-2499
  Abstract Following the announcement in 1949 in the USA that cortisone offered rheumatoid arthritis sufferers effective treatment for their crippling disease, the Ministry of Health came under considerable pressure from the medical profession and the public to make cortisone available in Britain. The Ministry, therefore, urged British companies to start manufacturing cortisone. Among the several pharmaceutical firms responding to the Ministry's request, Glaxo's expertise in the field of vitamins gave them a head start. This paper describes the varied and flexible strategy that enabled Glaxo to maintain this head start, and the scientific and technical capabilities which the company subsequently built up, enabling them to dominate the market for corticosteroids in Britain. Among the drugs to emerge out of the Glaxo project to manufacture cortisone, which began in 1950 and later became a wider R&D programme on steroids, was the topical steroid Betnovate, launched in 1963, which remains a best-seller today. However, although it led to successful new products, Glaxo's programme had limitations. The paper identifies a missed opportunity, in the shape of the biosynthetic route to steroid drugs, often considered as a milestone in the development of the new biotechnology. Whether or not this missed opportunity proved costly to the company is uncertain. However, it illustrates the role of technological path-dependence, and the importance of the integration between different scientific disciplines, in this case chemistry and biology, in pharmaceutical innovation.Website 
• Quirke V, 'French biomedicine in the mirror of America'
  Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35 (4) (2004) pp.765-776
  ISSN: 1369-8486 eISSN: 1879-2499
  Website 

Book chapters

• Quirke VM, 'Pharmaceutical Innovation in the Public and Private Spheres' in Healthcare in Private and Public from the Early Modern Period to 2000, Routledge (2014)
  ISBN: 978-0415727037
  
• Quirke V, 'Les relations franco-britanniques et l'industrie pharmaceutique: une perspective internationale sur l'histoire de Rhône-Poulenc' in Echanges Franco-britanniques Entre Savants Depuis Le XVIIe Siecle: Franco-British Interactions in Science Since the Seventeenth Century, College Publications (2010)
  ISBN: 978848900002
  Abstract Polemiques et constructifs a  la fois, faits de reprises et de traductions, de controverses et de confrontations, les echanges entre les savants britanniques et francais ont joue un role essentiel dans le developpement de la science en Europe depuis le XVIIe siecle. Ni les guerres qui ont oppose les deux pays, ni l'attachement a  des figures emblematiques d'une science nationale n'ont pu durablement entraver la poursuite de constantes interactions et de fructueuses collaborations au service du developpement du savoir. Les dix-neuf contributions ici rassemblees, dont les auteurs, francais ou britanniques, s'expriment chacun dans leur langue, examinent avec precision quelques-uns des episodes de ces echanges, dans les domaines des mathematiques et de l'astronomie, de la physique, de la chimie et des theories du vivant, en s'attachant a  la correspondance, aux politiques de traduction, aux relations entre institutions savantes ou aux prolongements techniques et industriels de la recherche. Ces travaux resultent d'un colloque qui s'est tenu a  la Maison francaise d'Oxford en mars 2006 a  l'initiative de la Societe francaise d'histoire des sciences et des techniques et de l'European Society for the history of science, en collaboration avec la British society for the history of science et le reseau Europaeum. Interactions between the scientific communities of Britain and France have done much to fashion the course of European science since the seventeenth century. Marked on occasions by rivalry and unhelpful displays of national pride as well as by cooperation, the interactions provide a fascinating subject for historical enquiry. This volume assembles nineteen essays on key themes including travel, correspondence, translation, collaborative and competitive research, and the role of exchanges at both the personal and the institutional level, with examples drawn from astronomy, mathematics, the physical and life sciences, and the work of industrial laboratories. The essays have their origin in an international conference held at the Maison francaise, Oxford in March 2006 as a joint initiative of the Societe francaise d'histoire des sciences et des techniques and the European Society for the History of Science, in collaboration with the British Society for the History of Science and the Europaeum network of European universities.
• Quirke V, 'From antibiotics to cancer chemotherapy (1950s-1980s): the transformation of Rhône-Poulenc in the era of biomedicine' in Circulation of Antibiotics: Journeys of Drug Standards, 1930-1970, ESF (2010)
  
• Quirke V, 'Standardizing R&D in the second half of the twentieth century: ICI's Nolvadex Development Programme in historical and comparatve perspective' in Harmonizing Drugs: Standards in 20th-Century Pharmaceutical History, Editions Glyphe (2009)
  ISBN: 9782358150163
  
• Quirke V, 'Anglo-American relations and the co-production of American "hegemony" in pharmaceuticals' in American Firms in Europe Strategy, Identity, Perception and Performance (1880-1980), Droz (2008)
  ISBN: 9782600012591
  Abstract The processes of the Americanisation of Europe and the moves of American firms abroad have been already well studied. But the very expansion of American firms in Europe still lacked a comprehensive survey. This book gathered two dozen academics at the European level, which paving the way to comparisons, synthetised by leading business historian Mira Wilkins. The breakthroughs achieved here concern the topics of timetable and rhythms of American FDIs in Europe, the patterns followed in each country, along with the specificities of each industry or service sector, and the strategy adopted by big firms. Beyond the facts, the immaterial aspects of this business history are scrutinised, especially the perception of American firms by Europeans: firms'corporate image and identity were at stake. The Europeanisation of American firms is a key issue, about industrial relations, management, commercial policies, brand image, connections and embeddedness. The positions of public authorities and of (industrialists and trade unions') lobbies in front of such an American offensive are also gauged. Graphs and tables of figures provide numerous data. And a few chapters are accompanied by an overview of ads published by American affiliates in newsmagazines, to fuel analysis of their perception by consumers.
• Quirke V, ''Drugs (medical)'' in , n/a ()
  

Reviews

• Quirke V, review of Hormones of Life. Endocrinology, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Dream of a Remedy for Sterility, 1930-1970, in Ambix 60 (2013) pp.83-84ISSN: 0002-6980 eISSN: 1745-8234
  
• Quirke V, review of Evaluating and Standardizing Therapeutic Agents 1890-1950., in British Journal for the History of Science 45 (2012) pp.470-472ISSN: 0007-0874 eISSN: 1474-001X
  Website 
• Quirke V, review of Knowledge Accumulation and Industry Evolution: the Case of Pharma-biotech, in British Journal for the History of Science 41 (2009) pp.626-628ISSN: 0007-0874 eISSN: 1474-001X
  Website 
• Quirke V, review of From Physick to Pharmacology: Five Hundred Years of British Drug Retailing, in Medical History 52 (2008) pp.417-417ISSN: 0025-7273
  
• Quirke V, review of Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy, in Technology and Culture 49 (2008) pp.829-831ISSN: 0040-165X eISSN: 1097-3729
  
• Quirke V, review of Designs for Life: Molecular Biology After World War II, in Social History of Medicine 16 (2004) pp.547-548ISSN: 0951-631X eISSN: 1477-4666
  
• Quirke V, review of Inventing Biomedicine - France, America and the Production of Knowledge About Life (1945-1965), in Social History of Medicine 16 (2004) pp.545-546ISSN: 0951-631X eISSN: 1477-4666
  
• Quirke V, review of The Pharmaceutical Industry: a Guide to Historical Records, in Economic History Review 56 (2004) pp.798-798ISSN: 0013-0117 eISSN: 1468-0289
  

Membership of professional bodies

• Secretary of the British Society for the History of Science between 2005 and 2010
• Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry Historical Group Committee
• Member of the Steering Committee for the History of Science at the Maison Francaise d'Oxford
• Member of the American Association for the History of Medicine
• Member of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
• Member of the Royal Historical Society
• Member of the Royal Microscopical Society

Conferences

Conferences

Public lectures

• 'Franco-British relations, war, and the pharmaceutical industry: Rhone-Poulenc in international and historical perspective' (Lycee du Parc, Lyon, 21 October 2009).
• 'Pharmaceuticals and 20th-century chemistry' ('Chemistry and the Growth of Science', day school of the Department of Continuing Education, Oxford University, Rewley House, 29 January 2011).

Published conference and workshop presentations

• 'From antibiotics to cancer chemotherapy: the transformation of Rhone-Poulenc in the era of biomedicine' (ESF Antibiotics workshop preprint, Madrid, 16-18 June 2009).
• 'Developing penicillin, patenting cephalosporin, and transforming medical research in Britain: the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at Oxford, 1930s-1970s', in J.P. Gaudilliere, D.J. Kevles, and H.-J. Rheinberger (eds), Living Properties: making knowledge and controlling ownership in the history of biology (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Preprint 382, 2009), pp. 65-73.
• 'The impact of Thalidomide on the British pharmaceutical industry: the case of Imperial Chemical Industries', in J.-P. Gaudilliere and V. Hess (eds), Ways of Regulating: therapeutic agents between plants, shops, and consutling rooms(Max Planck Institute Preprint 363,Berlin, 2009), pp. 125-41.
• 'From chemistry to pharmaceuticals, and from pharmaceuticals to biotechnology: the many transformations of ICI in the twentieth century', in I. Malaquias, E, Hombrurg and M.E. Callapez (eds), Chemistry, Technology and Society, (Lisbon: Sociedade Portuguesa de Quimica, 2006), also accessible online
• 'Bridging boundaries: the evolution of the Scientific Services Group, and the growth of pharmaceutical research at ICI ca 1955-75', European History Association annual meeting, Barcelona, 16-18 September 2004 (EBHA website)
• 'Drugs by serendipity or by design? Applying science to the pharmaceutical industry in 1950s Britain and France', European Business History Association annual meeting, Oslo, 31 August-1 September 2001 (EBHA website).

Conference and seminar organisation

• 'Evidence, clinical trials, and human experimentation', Oxford Brookes University History of Medicine seminar series, semester 1, 2010-11.
• 'Treating the heart, treating cancer: medicines and the standardization of chronic disease', ESF-funded workshop held at Manchester University, Nov.-Dec. 2009.
• Joint Oxford University, Maison Francaise d'Oxford, and Oxford Brookes University History of Chemistry Seminar Series: 'Mastering Nature? Chemistry in History' (Trinity 2008, Trinity 2009, Trinity 2010).
• 'Cancer and innovation. How to deal with cancer? Cancer, innovation and politics', workshop held at the Maison Francaise d'Oxford, 4 Feb. 2009.
• 'Pharmaceutical styles of thinking and doing: French and British spheres of influence in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries', session for 3rd Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, Vienna, Austria, 9-13 Sept. 2008.
• 'The Importance of Place: connecting disciplines in and around Oxford', session for 3 Societies meeting, Oxford University, 4-6 July 2008.

Other experience

Editorships

• Editor of the Newsletter of the RSC Historical Group between 2006 and 2010.
• Guest editor with Jean-Paul Gaudilliere, 'The Era of Biomedicine: science, medicine and health in Britain and France, ca 1945-65', special issue of Medical History, 52 (2008).
• Guest Editor of 'Pharmaceutical styles: French and British spheres of influence in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries', special issue of Pharmacy in History, 52 (2010).