Thus far, this book has suggested links between early modern and modern experiences of self-wounding without fully exploring that connection. Each chapter (barring the Introduction and Conclusion) is preceded by quotes from the play written as part of creative workshops related to the ‘public’ part of this project, and there are some more substantial points of connection; in Chap. 3 , for instance, I briefly considered how the modern categorisation of some self-injury events as unconnected with suicidal ideation, and therefore less worthy of notice, compares with Renaissance representations of self-wounding as powerfully communicative. Throughout this project, however, the complexities of comparing actions which look the same but are understood differently have been keenly felt. This final chapter is therefore an unusual intervention in a primarily historicist text—an attempt to reflect on those challenges through theories about (un)historicism, self-injury and publicly engaged research, and via a description of my own imperfect practice.