Profile
I am an historian, researcher, editor, author and lecturer specialising in the long nineteenth century, with particular interests in print culture. I have recently been awarded a PhD by Edge Hill University. My PhD project, which was undertaken in collaboration with the British Library, was supported financially by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Collaborative Doctoral Partnership award. It aims to reassess orthodox determinations of success and failure in the nineteenth-century press by considering afresh the representative role of short-lived newspapers, especially in the London area, during the century.
Research Interests
My passion is the nineteenth-century print media, especially in the back-stories behind newspapers with particular emphasis on the swathes of short-lived titles (lasting five years or less in print). I’m curious about who was behind them, why they launched them, how they did it and the circumstances that led to their closure. In more general terms, though, my research interests are –
- The industrial, political and societal culture of the long nineteenth century
- The development of print culture in the nineteenth century, including the popular press
- The digital humanities, especially as applied to archival research
- The development of crime narratives, including detective fiction as well as factual/journalistic accounts of crime
- Subversives and morally ambiguous characters in British culture.
Current Roles
Following the completion of my PhD studies, I currently have two main roles:
Fellow in Applied History, The Social History Archive (also a Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research and an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society)
Co-Editor, The Edinburgh History of the Radical Press, 1780-1914, vol. 2: The Radical Religious Press (due 2028)
In addition, I am continuing to work independently as a researcher, preparing articles for publication and working on a book proposal.
At Edge Hill University
My PhD studies were supervised by Professor Bob Nicholson and Dr Andrew McInnes.
I am proud to have been a member of the EHU Nineteen research centre
At the British Library
My collaborative PhD project owes its beginnings to the work of the News and Moving Image curators at the British Library, in particular the Heritage Made Digital project, which you can read more about here.
At Ironbridge Gorge Museums
During my PhD, I was lucky enough to carry out a voluntary research placement at Ironbridge Gorge Museums between October 2023 and March 2024, researching the lives of the Quaker women of Coalbrookdale in the 18th and 19th centuries.