Title: 'Chemists to the Nation, Pharmacy to the World': Exploring the Global Dimensions of British Healthcare and Beauty with Boots the Chemists, 1919-1980
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Abstract: This project will explore the largely unknown international history of British healthcare and beauty, using Boots the Chemists, Britain's most recognised chain pharmacist, as the central case study. The project spans the period from 1919, when the company posted its first sales agent overseas, to the streamlining of its divisions in 1980. It examines how Boots established itself as a prospector, retailer and manufacturer overseas, but also how it continually absorbed international influences as part of its home marketing strategies. Drawing on Boots' vast, underexplored archive (c.5,000 boxes of approximately 500,000 items), this project bridges medical, social, cultural, business, colonial and transnational history. The project team are not interested in writing a classic business biography of Boots' success and growth, rather they are interested in exploring what the Boots story reveals about the international dynamics of the British health and beauty industries. The central research question asks: How does Boots' international archive allow us to map the global networks that moulded and sustained British experiences of healthcare and beauty both at home and abroad? To answer this, thematically focused work packages will recreate the life-cycles of key products within six product domains (pain management, personal hygiene, surgical supplies, vitamins, perfumes, and skincare) across local, national and international spaces. These six focal areas have been selected because of their ample archival resources and their potential to illustrate how complex imperial and other global networks of materials, knowledge and people underpinned the development of British healthcare and beauty, both at home and overseas. This pioneering research will appear in leading academic journals across the historical humanities and in a co-authored book. It will advance early career capacity by employing a full-time postdoctoral researcher, and provide additional opportunities for an already funded M4C doctoral student. Three interdisciplinary academic workshops will explore new perspectives on the internationalisation of the UK beauty and healthcare industries and will open the project to colleagues in geography, pharmacy, medicine, literature and linguistics. The project team will showcase findings via an easily navigable website featuring information about the project, links to relevant resources and quarterly updated project stories, attractively illustrated with archival images. Some of these stories will be authored by the project team and some by 'citizen researchers'. These contributors will be identified through call outs via social media, Boots newsletters, and the local press, and might be local history enthusiasts, former Boots employees or business people reflecting on historical context. Additional outreach will include two pieces of popular history, a high-profile public exhibition, with a touring component and accompanying public talks, timed to coincide with Boots' 175th anniversary in 2024. A further outreach strategy targets professional archivists via three initiatives i) working with Boots Archive staff to help inform their cataloguing and digitisation strategies; ii) holding three innovative 'Archive Roadshows' where team members visit other significant business archives (Unilever, Marks and Spencer, John Lewis) to reflect on the usefulness and accessibility of their resources; iii) hosting an Archive Study Day to bring together company archivists throughout the UK. Finally, team members will work with Nottinghamshire County Council to run two 'Knowledge Labs' to consider how this research might stimulate creative thinking about current issues facing the UK high street. Sessions will discuss not only how local growth is internationally informed, but also how international markets are heavily influenced by smaller local developments.


Research activity codes: 8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE