Epistemic Injustice and the History of Loneliness

Case Study Lead

Dr Fred Cooper, University of Bristol Law School.

This case study adapts methodologies from the history of medicine to think critically about the relationship between past and present processes of knowledge production and epistemic injustices pertaining to the experience and representation of loneliness. Responding to repeated calls from philosophers of health and illness to excavate and historicise the structural determinants of epistemic harms, it asks how dominant interpretive resources used to understand and address loneliness were assembled, and how well they work for the people who need them most. In particular, it takes sight at a series of ways of knowing, such as measurement, medicalisation, and politicisation, which have complex histories and extensive epistemic consequences. At the same time, it explores loneliness as a product (and mechanism) of epistemic injustice more broadly, and considers how experiences of loneliness with other causes can constrain both solitary and collective epistemic action.

The purpose of the case study is to combine empirical historical work with scholarship on loneliness as a problem of knowledge, politics, and power. It tests and spotlights a ‘history of the present’ approach in demonstrating the roots and fruits of some of the biggest epistemic challenges for loneliness research and practice in the present day, pulling focus to the veiled and vexed dialogue between lonely experience and professional knowledge.

The case study takes a pluralistic tack on the data it works from. Published and archived  historical sources afford close genealogical reconstructions of specific pressure points in the history of loneliness. This includes work on the archives of post-war charities and organisations; print journalism; books, articles, and unpublished theses taken from across loneliness studies, psychology, and psychiatry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; research on the history of loneliness as a problem for general practice; and the records of activist organisations that used loneliness as a language to map out different kinds of oppression and harm. It also makes extensive use of ego documents and other first person accounts (including loneliness and illness narratives), as well as published reflections on oppression, shame, and solitude, to think in depth about how loneliness, epistemic agency, and injustice interact.

The primary output communicating the conclusions of the case study will be a book, Loneliness and Epistemic Injustice: History, Philosophy, Politics, and Power (currently under contract with Bloomsbury). The majority of the research for the case study has now taken place, and has been - or is in the process of being - written up, with a chapter in an upcoming edited volume, ‘The ancestors of our lonely present: historical knowledge, epistemic injustice, and isolation from the past’; another article under review; and two in preparation. The case study has informed work on the Epistemic Determinants of Health for WHO/Europe’s Behavioural and Cultural Insights Hub, and a briefing on young men’s loneliness for the UK Department for Culture, Media, and Sport.

Recent invited talks and round tables include:

Reducing Social Isolation and Loneliness in Cornwall. Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust. 26th November 2025.

Loneliness Through Different Lenses - Exploring loneliness across scientific disciplines. Loneliness and social disconnection: new directions for research and intervention, University of Helsinki. 11th November 2025.

The loneliness measurement scales: a critical historical analysis. Measurement in the History of Medicine Seminar Series, University of Durham.28th May 2025.

Woman Alone: Carmita Wood's archival fragments and the emotions of epistemic injustice. Epistemic Injustice in Healthcare Seminar Series, University of Bristol. 27th January 2025.

The Naked Terror: Joseph Conrad, ‘True Loneliness’, and the inability to know. Loneliness, Metaphor, and Empathy, University of Nottingham. 21st January 2025.

Cooper will also be sharing work from the case study at the following events in 2026:

Loneliness & Social Isolation in Mental Health Research Network Research Webinar, Division of Psychiatry, UCL. January 21st, 2026.

Epistemic Harms, Technical University of Munich. March 5th, 2026.

EPIC Seminar Series, University of Bristol. March 30th, 2026.