Margaret Carlyle’s path to academia has been anything but linear. Originally from Winnipeg, her journey began with plans to pursue medicine before an elective course sparked a lasting passion for history. That shift ultimately led her across disciplines and continents—from undergraduate studies and formative experiences abroad to graduate training and research positions at leading institutions in North America and Europe.
Now a faculty member at UBC Okanagan, her work bridges the history of science, medicine, and technology, with a particular focus on gender and the body. In the conversation that follows, she reflects on her academic journey, her approach to teaching and research, and the moments—both big and small—that have shaped her career.
Can you tell us a bit about your educational journey? How did you come to pursue the field you are in? What led you to come to UBCO?
I’m a born-and-raised Winnipegger, and I completed my BA in History and French at the University of Winnipeg. During my undergraduate degree, I had the opportunity to spend a year abroad in Perpignan, France. It was a truly life-changing experience, filled with travel—to Spain, Morocco, and Germany, among other countries—and a deeply immersive engagement with the French language, as well its culture and politics, including a firsthand understanding of the Catalan independence movement. That year deepened my love of history and expanded my sense of the world.
I did not initially plan to become a historian—or to study the humanities, for that matter. I began my undergraduate degree intending to pursue medicine and spent my first year mapping out the prerequisites I would need for Med school. But I enrolled in a history course as an elective and immediately felt the pull of the past. The rest, as they say, is history. Then, early in grad school, I discovered the exciting world of the history of science, which felt like a way of coming home to the sciences and bringing my two interests together. I could maintain my fascination with scientific and medical knowledge while asking broader questions about how, why, and with what consequences that knowledge is produced.
My graduate training at McGill University was incredibly formative, offering many opportunities to dig deeply into my research field and to connect with fellow travellers through conferences and research groups both at the university and across the wider Montreal academic network. I also fell in love with Montreal’s own vibrant and storied history, which really rounded out my education in the best possible way. From there, my itinerary was transatlantic: across the pond, I spent two heady years at the University of Cambridge in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, followed by a stint as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota. Just before coming to UBCO, I was based at a new interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Chicago, which prepared me well for landing here, particularly given our IGS program.
I felt incredibly fortunate to have landed my position at UBCO when I did—and I still feel that way. I vividly remember signing my contract while waiting for a flight in the New Orleans airport after a conference, just days before the world began shutting down due to COVID-19—a moment that underscored both the unpredictability of academic life and how lucky I was to have arrived here when (and how) I did!
Can you talk about your current role(s) at UBCO? What do you find enjoyable about them and what do you find challenging?
As a tenure-track assistant professor, I have my feet in the worlds of research, teaching, and service. What I value most about my role at UBCO is its distinctive blend of environments—it feels at once like a liberal arts college and a research-intensive university. That combination keeps me on my toes and is, more often than not, energizing. On any given day, I might teach a big intro class, meet with a graduate student to talk about their project, dash through the library to pick up an interlibrary loan, and grab a tea at Comma, chatting with the baristas or colleagues in the queue. I call that a good day! The intellectual community here is vibrant and interdisciplinary, which aligns well with my work in the history of science, medicine, and technology. I’m also grateful to have such supportive colleagues working on topics so different from my own—I learn a lot from them, and I really couldn’t ask for more.
The greatest challenge, perhaps, is keeping pace—not only with students and their evolving social and intellectual worlds, but also with the rapidly shifting world in which we live. There are so many pressing “current affairs,” but I’ll mention just one: AI. As a historian of science and technology, I’m very aware that moments of technological change have always generated anxiety. Humans have long been wary of the “new”—and more often than not, for very good reason. Novelty itself isn’t inherently threatening, but it does demand thoughtful engagement, and we—as humans—have the right to ask big questions about AI, so that we can shape this technology before it shapes us. AI is clearly a powerful tool, one that requires equally thoughtful reflection well beyond the tech industry.
Can you describe your teaching philosophy?
I come from a big family—I’ve got five siblings!—so I grew up knowing that there are at least six sides to every story. Well, actually eight, if you include my parents. That early lesson has shaped both my approach to research and my teaching, and I hope that I convey the richness and multidimensionality of the past to my students.
Growing up in a lively household also taught me empathy. I believe one of the historian’s most important assets is the cultivation of empathy—what I see as a disciplined effort to understand the lives of others on their own terms, while also remaining critical of those terms. To reconstruct the past requires attentiveness to people’s worries and worldviews, their experiences and triumphs, their kin and communities. In the classroom, I encourage students to practice this form of historical imagination while grounding their interpretations in careful analysis of evidence in all its forms.
Historians do not have all the answers, but we do offer something powerful: the ability to tell meaningful stories about the human experience. I remind my students—and myself—of both the presence of the past and the “presents” of the past. Whether these sources, or “gifts,” arrive as small fragments tucked away in archives or transformative speeches widely available, our work carries the joy (and responsibility) of carefully piecing them together into narratives that help us better understand how we got to where we are today.
What are your research interests and what do you hope to gain/solve/better understand from your research? What research projects have been most meaningful to you?
My research focuses on medicine and the body, with a particular emphasis on gender—especially how women contributed to scientific and medical knowledge in ways that have often been overlooked. I work on early modern France and the French Atlantic world, exploring science, technology, and medicine not just through texts, but also through objects, images, and hands-on practices. More broadly, I’m interested in how knowledge about the body is shaped by gender, material practices, and wider social and cultural contexts, and in making visible the contributions of people traditionally left out of these histories.
At UBCO, my research has centered on two main projects: the history of anatomy and obstetrics, respectively. My first book explores how women’s bodies—and women themselves—were central to anatomical knowledge and practice during a key period of transition toward what we now call “modern medicine.” My other big project focuses on reproductive technologies in the French Atlantic world, examining instruments, training tools, and childbirth practices, with an emphasis on both collaboration and competition between male and female practitioners.
One of the most meaningful projects I worked on prior to landing here was co-curating an exhibition with a physician titled The Fetus in Utero: From Mystery to Social Media at the University of Chicago. It charted the visual history of the fetus over the past 500 years using the library’s collections. It was a wonderful opportunity to think about how to communicate this research to a broader public beyond academia. The exhibition was featured in the Chicago Tribune, and one reader even took the time to write to me to say how much she wished people had known more about women’s reproductive health in her day. Relatedly, I’ve recently been involved in a UBC research team working on chronic pelvic pain education for clinicians, which has been a rewarding way to connect historical research to contemporary medical practice—and to highlight the importance of learning from patients and their embodied experiences.
What is the main thing you hope your students will take away from your classes?
I suppose the main thing I hope students take away from my classes is not just new knowledge, but a different way of thinking about what they know—or thought they knew. I often joke that I come from a big, lively family where everyone has their own opinion about everything, and that this has shaped how I approach history and teaching. There’s never just one perspective.
So yes, I want students to learn about past people and events, but just as importantly, I hope they come to see them in new—and nuanced—ways, by questioning assumptions, recognizing complexity, and understanding that historical actors don’t always think as we do now.
Ideally, my classes let students “travel” to other times and places. And when they come back to the present, they have a broader sense of the human experience—what motivates people; how past societies were both different from and similar to our own; how they constructed knowledge of themselves and the natural world around them; and why that still matters.
What are some of your most memorable teaching moments?
First off, I’ve had the good fortune to teach at several institutions—McGill, U Chicago, U Minnesota, U Cambridge, and now UBCO—and each has offered its own unique student culture. These experiences have taught me that students everywhere also ultimately share a lot in common, namely an energy and enthusiasm to come to class ready to ask important questions and to offer up some answers.
Like so much of history itself, my most memorable teaching moments are not often singular or dramatic. They are cumulative—the sum of small, incremental steps that unfold over time. For example, I treasure the quieter moments spent reading a final essay in which a student connects ideas in ways I had never anticipated. In terms of classroom moments, one that stands out was the final “listening party” in my podcasting course that I ran a few years ago. Hearing students share their research projects through the world of sound, and witnessing the intellectual and creative risks they had taken, was quite moving.
I’d also say that some of the most meaningful teaching moments happen on the margins of the classroom. For example, when a former student emailed me out of the blue in order to describe how his travels abroad had allowed him to see for himself so much of what we had covered in class. He also joked that he wished he could rewrite his final essay. Messages like this remind me that learning does not end with the final, and I think that’s ultimately a good thing.
What is your proudest professional accomplishment?
Without a doubt, it’s the acceptance of my book for publication! Women, Gender, and Anatomy in Enlightenment France, forthcoming with McGill-Queen’s University Press this fall. A labour of love, it offers a kind of snapshot of my intellectual journey to date—with all its many debts—and serves as a way to share some of that journey with the world in printed form. I am so thrilled to dedicate it to the memory of my wonderful and much-missed dad—the man, the legend.
Where do you see yourself in 5-10 years?
Hopefully alive and well right here in Kelowna! And—if I can be so bold—with tenure!
Right now, I am diving into my second book project on reproductive technologies in the French Atlantic. I’m especially interested in midwives and how knowledge around childbirth was created and shared. One of the biggest challenges is sources—many of the women I study didn’t leave behind written records, either because they weren’t formally literate or because their knowledge was passed on through practice rather than print.
A big part of my work involves looking both in and beyond traditional archives. This includes little archival nuggets that reference these women, as well as the work of triangulating what we know about them through sources written by others. I also spend time pursuing visual and material collections, working with things like drawings, instruments, and anatomical models. These kinds of sources can tell us a lot about how medicine was actually practiced and understood, and they help recover voices and experiences that don’t always show up in written documents.
Longer term, I also have a project in mind on natural knowledge in the French Pacific Ocean world—but that’s definitely down the road. Please ask me about that in 10 years!
Can you tell us something (hobbies, interests etc.) that your colleagues may not know about you?
I love a good dance party—preferably to 80s or 90s music—and maybe I’ll come dressed in character as an aerobics instructor named Cindy. 😉 A dive bar with a cover band is hard to beat, which is why I try to rally the troops for a dance night at the Blue Gator. I also like to stay active, whether that means cycling to campus or enjoying a dip in the lake.
I’m drawn to live music of all kinds, and I have a particular fondness for the atmosphere of jazz and blues clubs. I’ve been lucky enough to visit some memorable ones in New York, Chicago, and Montreal, and I love the way these spaces blend history, performance, and intimacy. I’m also a devoted cinemagoer—there’s something irreplaceable about watching a film in a theatre and immersing yourself in someone else’s story.
I probably consume more true crime than is strictly advisable, which I justify as an extension of my interest in the history of forensics. It’s also, in some ways, a quiet way of remembering my dad, who shared in this fascination.
Otherwise, I’m happiest reading a book in a good coffee shop (with tea—coffee makes me jittery), and I love creative side projects and keeping up with the exciting lives of my very big family. Lately, that includes making a Monopoly board as a gift for my nephew. It’s a work in progress and coming up with street names that will resonate with a tween takes me a minute, which is—of course—a big part of the fun!