Dr Richard McKay
Treasurer
Richard A. McKay is Treasurer for the Society. A twentieth- and twenty-first-century historian of medicine, public health, and sexuality, he is College Lecturer and Director of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and an affiliated scholar with the University of Cambridge’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science. In 2019 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Richard also works as a coach for executives, writers, and active individuals approaching retirement.
His research focuses on the social, political, cultural, and medical aspects of infectious diseases in Britain and North America, particularly sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, examining how they have impacted minoritised populations such as gay men and other men who had sex with men, sex workers, and incarcerated individuals. His work has been published in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Medical Anthropology, and Nature. He is the author of Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic (University of Chicago Press, 2017), which was named a Choice Review Outstanding Academic Title and developed into the award-winning documentary feature film, Killing Patient Zero (Fadoo, 2019).
Richard welcomes enquiries on the twentieth-century history of sexual health and sexually transmitted infections in Britain and North America, and on public-health methodologies like contact tracing.