On the first Thursday of the month the Royal College of Physicians Museum opens its doors for a series of free Museum Late events. Giving visitors the chance to experience more than 500 years of history at England’s oldest medical college.

During Catch Your Breath you can join a special curator-led tour and join in themed activities led by members of the Life of Breath project team and our collaborators.

The programme for Thursday 1 August is about the social history of tobacco and smoking. Join Life of Breath‘s Professor Andrew Russell for a talk on the anthropology of tobacco and the implications of its journey across the world, based on his newly released open access book The Anthropology of Tobacco: Ethnographic Adventures in Non-Human Worlds (Routledge 2019).

The evening will also be an opportunity to view the Royal College of Physicians’ tobacco and smoking related archival collections and a tour from a member of the curatorial team. There is no need to book for these sessions individually. Just book here for the whole evening and come along to as many as you like!

About Andrew

Andrew is a Reader in the Department of Anthropology at Durham University. His research focuses on tobacco, its use and control. He is particularly interested in understanding smoking as an embodied physical and emotional experience, the history of tobacco use and smokers’ rituals and sense of identity, and then exploring how this might contribute to policy and therapeutic interventions not only in tobacco but other areas of public health.