Teri Chettiar

I am a historian of the human sciences and my research focuses on how changing understandings of mental and emotional health in the 20^th century have interacted with and shaped marginalized identities and movements for social and sexual reform. My first book, The Intimate State: How Emotional Life Became Political in Welfare-State Britain (Oxford University Press, 2022), examines how British state-supported mental health initiatives made emotional intimacy and lifelong monogamy both politically valued and personally desired in the second half of the twentieth century. I have published articles related to this in History of the Human Sciences, History of Psychology, Journal of British Studies, and History of Medicine. 

I am currently working on two new projects: one focuses on the history of intergenerational trauma and the other examines ongoing race, gender, and class-based disparities related to the diagnosis and treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the US, Canada, and the UK.