Eliska Bujokova
Eliska Bujokova is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. She specialises in the history of care and welfare across geographies of the British Empire in the long eighteenth century. She is particularly interested in the interplay between capitalism, social reproduction, and labour.
She is currently developing her postdoctoral research into a monograph entitled Caring at Sea: Naval Welfare in the British Atlantic Empire, c.1700–c.1780. Constructing a transcolonial history of naval welfare, Caring at Sea, will offer a new lens on eighteenth-century imperial statecraft by investigating how diverse reproductive infrastructures underpinned and facilitated colonial naval power.
Dr Bujokova received her MA (Hons) in History from the University of Glasgow (2018), followed by an MPhil in Economic and Social History from the University of Cambridge (2019). She completed her PhD (2024) at the University of Glasgow (2024), with a thesis titled ‘Knitting together all Parts of the Vast Structure of Society’: Care Work, Philanthropy and Urban Welfare in Scotland, c.1720–c.1840. Her PhD examined care as both a resource and a form of labour, central to the socio-economic, political, and institutional developments of industrialising urban Scotland amid Britain’s expanding Empire. During her PhD, she completed several visiting fellowships at Uppsala University (Gender and Work Project), Linköping University, and the European University Institute.
Dr Bujokova is a board member of the Society for Nautical Research and a project lead on its current ADM Community Filing Project (forthcoming).
Publications
Articles and book chapters
2025, Bujokova, E. ‘None regardless of reputation will be treated with’: Midwifery and commercial care work in the Urban Space c 1780 c 1840’, Social History of Medicine.
2023, Bujokova, E. ‘‘On the respectability of this person every thing depends’: Hospital Matrons and Power Relations in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, c. 1817-1820’, Women’s History Review, 32:5, 678-698.
2023, Bujokova, E. & Desportes, J. ‘Poor Relief as ‘Improvement’: Moral and Spatial Economies of Care in Scotland, c.1720s -1790s’ Continuity and Change, 113-136.
Forthcoming
Bujokova, E. ‘Uncovering the Language of Care, a case study of Lowland Scotland, c1750 c1850’ (Scottish Historical Review, forthcoming, April 2026, highly shortlisted for ECR Article Prize)
Bujokova, E. ‘Bodies of labour and labouring bodies: naval structures of care and bodywork in the British Caribbean, c1720-c1810’ in Melanie Bassett (ed.) Port Cities in Global History (Palgrave Macmillan, Global Studies in Social and Cultural Maritime History book series, forthcoming, 2026)
Bujokova, E. ‘The Care Economy in Long Eighteenth-Century Britain: Care Regimes, Capitalism and Empire’, in Lewis-Nang’ea, A., Simonton, D., Lanza, J. (eds.) Routledge History of Global Women and Work (Routledge, forthcoming, 2026)
Reviews
2024 Elizabeth S. Cohen and Marlee J. Couling (eds), Non-Elite Women’s Networks Across the Early Modern World, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2023. (Women’s History Review, 33:3, 449-50).
2023 Claudia Soares, A Home from Home? Children and Social Care in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, 1870-1920, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. (Family and Community History, 26:2, 186-7)
2023 Kate Gibson, Illegitimacy, Family & Stigma in England, 1660-1834, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. (Family and Community History, 26:3, 263-4)
Matthew Neufeld, Early Modern Naval Health Care in England, 1650-1759, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s/AMS Healthcare Studies in the History of Medicine, Health, and Society, 2024. (International Journal of Maritime History, forthcoming, 2026)
Web publications
2021 Bujokova, E. Producing the Living Gender History Podcast
2021 Bujokova, E. Rewriting Histories of Care in Times of Corona
2020 Bujokova, E. Victoria Bateman: The Sex Factor: How Women Made the West Rich, Review article
2020 Bujokova, E. Multiple Realities of Covid19: Experiences of Glasgow’s Migrant Women
2020 A. McEwan, C. Whyte, E. Bujokova, H. Teiling, H. Yoken, L. Abrams, M. Hamilton, Gendering Covid-19: Economies of Care and Bodily Integrity
2019 Bujokova, E. Eighteenth Century Wet-Nursing Practices and Reproductive Care Chains: What Has (Not) Changed?
2019 Eliska Bujokova, For Love or Money- or Both?
Invited talks
2025 University of Glasgow Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies, paper ‘Edinburgh Boys at Sea: Scottish Philanthropy and the London Marine Society, 1756-1780’
2023 Department of History, European University Institute, paper ‘Tending to ‘His poor and sick brethren’: Medical Philanthropy, ‘Improvement’ and the Poor Law Reform’
2022 Institute of Historical Research Seminar Paper, London IHR, paper ‘Poor Relief as Improvement: Moral and Spatial Economies of Care in Scotland c1720-c1790’
2022 History Department Research Seminar, Linköping University, paper ‘Gender and Work in Care in Long Eighteenth-Century Scotland’
2022 Centre for Medical Humanities and Bioethics Research Seminar, Linköping University, paper ‘Matrons and Housekeepers: Food Provision and Power Relations in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh’
2022 History Department Research Seminar, Uppsala University, paper ‘Gender and Work in Care in Long Eighteenth-Century Scotland’
2022 Women’s Studies Group Seminar Paper, London Foundling Hospital Museum, On the respectability of this person every thing depends’: Hospital Matrons and Power Relations in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh
