Alette Blom

I am currently studying for my PhD degree in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. My undergraduate and graduate degree were completed cum laude at Leiden University in 2016 and 2018, respectively. From the very start of my studies I have become encapsulated by studying the impact of disease on populations and individuals in the past, and as such, studied the impact of disease and other types of physical stress on pubertal development in post medieval the Netherlands for my research master thesis. I have always wanted to do more interdisciplinary work though, and I am therefore thrilled to be starting my PhD in archaeology, researching how leprosy sufferers in medieval England have experienced living with their disease, both socially and biologically. I will do so by taking a multidisciplinary approach combining archaeology, osteology, paleopathology, isotope research, biomolecular approaches and historical sources. In this research, leprosy sufferers will not only be considered as a group, but individual biographies will be reconstructed allowing for a deeper understanding of social identities and individual life histories.