Simon Buck

Simon is a historian of medicine, currently based in Newcastle upon Tyne. His recent research has focused on the entwined histories of slavery and Scottish medicine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

 

As a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), he examined the University of Edinburgh’s historical links to slavery. His work has exposed the multiple ways in which Edinburgh Medical School was linked to and financially benefited from the transatlantic slave trade. Simon also led a similar project with NHS Lothian and Lothian Health Services Archive, exploring the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh's historical connections to enslavement. 

 

He believes it is vital for medical students, as the future of the medical profession, to leave their studies with a critical and honest understanding of the history of their discipline. He says, “I am pleased to have worked over recent years with staff and students in the Edinburgh Medical School as part of a wider drive to acknowledge, understand and begin to repair the institution's colonial legacies."