Fay Bound-Alberti
Professor in Modern History and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow
After working as a Professor in History at the University of York, and co-directing the Centre for Global Health Histories, Fay moved to King's in January 2023 as Professor in Modern History. Fay is the founder and formerly Director of King's Centre for Technology and the Body, one of three centres that are affiliated to the Digital Futures Institute at King's. The work of the Institute addresses Living Well with Technology – exploring how being human, and living well, intersects with the invention and implementation of technologies old and new. Fay is committed to collaborative and interdisciplinary working, is a member of the UKRI Peer Review College and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is currently writing two interconnected project: one, The Face: A Cultural History (published 2026), on the cultural history and meanings of the face, and another on transplants and emotion.
Her UKRIFLF funded project Interface, previously AboutFace, shows how important the humanities are for understanding surgical innovation, guiding medical practice and evaluating patient experience. Working with experts in 9 different countries around the globe, Interface examines the face as a mediator between the subjective and social worlds. It explores surgery, aesthetics and technology in relation to the human face, with particular reference to face transplants, cosmetic surgery and technologies from facial recognition systems to Deepfakes. Identity, disability, ethnicity, race and gender are among its core themes.
BOOKS
Biography
Since taking her DPhil at the University of York in 2000, Fay has worked extensively on the histories of the body, medicine, emotion and gender. Her work is thematic, moving from the early modern period (her DPhil thesis was on 'Performativity and practice: emotions at the church courts of York 1660-1760') to the present day. Having taught at the Universities of York, Manchester, UCL, Huddersfield and Lancaster, and having received several major grants from the British Academy, Wellcome and AHRC to study the histories of medicine, emotion and the body, Fay took time out of academia in 2006-2013 to work as an advisor in the funding sector. She was Head of Philanthropy for Lisbet Rausing and the Arcadia Fund, where she advised specifically on digitisation and cultural conservation, and Head of Medical Humanities and Ethics funding for the Wellcome Trust. Fay continued her research and publishing alongside these roles, and returned to academia in 2019, with one of the first UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships, to study the history and meanings of facial transplantation.
Research interests
History of emotion
History of the body
Medical History
Gender History
Social and Cultural History
Public engagement
Fay has extensive experience in public engagement and outreach work. During the Covid-19 pandemic she participated in more than 30 international media discussions about the impact and meanings of loneliness as a global health problem. She is a TED and Hay speaker, and a consultant on loneliness and mental health, who writes for publications like BBC History, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and TIME magazine, as well as being a regular interviewee on national and international radio to discuss the history and politics of medicine and emotions. For more information check Fay's website, interface and watch Fay's TED talk here.