I'm an art historian of French art and visual culture, specialising in images of addiction, alcohol and drug use, and medicine. I'm a lecturer in nineteenth-century French art history at the University of Edinburgh, and the Reviews Editor for the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs journal.
My book Art, Medicine, and Femininity: Visualising the Morphine Addict in Paris,1870-1914 is on the visual culture of drug addiction and how it relates to social issues of Third Republic France.
"I have been waiting for a book that looked closely at depictions of female drug users from a feminist, art-historical perspective. Hannah Halliwell’s Art, Medicine, and Femininity is that book. The writing is elegant and accessible. There is no jargon here, only clear, insightful prose about an impressive range of images and artworks, most of which I have never seen before. It is a feminist art historian’s paradise on the visual culture of addiction. It will be crucial reading for historians of drugs and addiction discourse, as well as gender studies scholars concerned with the ways women have been pathologized through text and image." Julia Skelly, in SHAD
My next book, Historical Dictionary of Impressionism, co-authored with Professor Frances Fowle is out in August 2026 with Bloomsbury. It contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography, as well as practical information on the eight Impressionist exhibitions. The dictionary section comprises cross-referenced entries on the French Impressionists, the locations they worked in (both in France and further afield), their predecessors and followers, and their models, critics and dealers. It also contains useful entries on key political events and figures, as well as the places of entertainment that sprang up all over Paris in the 'belle époque'. This book is designed to appeal to students, researchers and the general reader.