Julien Santos de Mello

Julien is a first-year PhD student at the University of Limerick, where she is supervised by Prof. Tiziana Margaria and Dr. Catherine Porter. Her research proposes to unravel the presence of Irish women practising traditional medicine through historical and geographical perspectives.  By using Artificial Intelligence to interoperate these different datasets, Julien’s research aims to provide a deeper and innovative analysis.
Julien graduated in History at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. During her undergraduate studies, she became interested in the topic of women in the folk medicine field and the issue of witch hunts. As a result, she developed an undergraduate thesis on women prosecuted for witchcraft in Scotland based on an extensive criminal records database. In recent years, Julien has also investigated anti-Judaism, medicine, and gender through a French criminal source in the Middle Ages, focussing on Jewish women’s representations and medical practices. Through her work and with the fundamental support of the digital humanities, she seeks to raise awareness of women’s roles in different periods and societies.

In her free time, Julien enjoys exploring museums, playing videogames, and trying out new types of coffee (as a good Brazilian).

Supervisor: Professor Tiziana Margaria & Dr. Catherine Porter