Originally from Croydon, I received my PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2010. Before joining the History programme at York St John University in 2013, I was the Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Leverhulme Trust-funded International Research Network, 'The Comparative History of Political Engagement in Western and African Societies', which was based at the University of Sheffield in the Centre for the Study of Democratic Study. From 2010 to 2019 I was a co-director of the public history project, 'Stories of Activism in Sheffield, 1960-present'.
I have designed and taught on a range of modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. I currently teach on the following modules:
- HIS4009M Global York: A Social and Cultural History
- HIS4012M People and Nature: an Environmental History
- HIS5002M Making History
- HIS5004M Watchers and the Watched: Society in Early Modern England
- HIS6005M Special Subject in Early Modern British History: The English Revolution
- HIS7011M Historians and the Writing of History
- HIS7013M MA Dissertation
- HIS7017M Bloody, Broken and Brave Communities: Microhistories of Everyday Life in the English Revolution
For 10 years I was the module director for 'History, Community and Culture', the History programme's flagship employability module. I am currently deputy chair of the School Quality Panel for the School of Humanities. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a teaching mentor, and an external examiner at Bath Spa University. I have also taught at the University of Sheffield (2006 to 2013) and the University of York (2008 to 2009).
My principal interests are in the social, cultural, administrative and environmental history of Early Modern Britain and Europe.
I am currently writing a social and administrative history of religious reform in the English Revolution, which emphasises the significant role played by the Committee for Plundered Ministers in pursuing the practical and everyday efforts of Parliament's reform polices, especially at the parish level. The themes of surveillance and the information state in early modern England are central to the project. In addition, I am also developing a new project on mental health, imprisonment and debt in seventeenth-century England.
I have previously published on historical culture, print culture and peacemaking in early modern England, with a specific focus on the 1640s and 1650s. This research was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I also have interests in historical theory, and have published work on theories of change.
As part of my public engagement activities, I have co-written articles that critique and reflect upon the possibilities and failures of public history. I also co-produced several activities and publications, including choral performances, city tours, practical workshops, and, with Sheffield Women Against Pit Closures, a book entitled 'You Can’t Kill the Spirit: Stories from Houghton Main Pit Camp, 1993', published in 2018.
I have held a David Walker Memorial Fellowship at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford and a Francis Bacon Foundation Fellowship at the Huntington Library, California. I have also received a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Grants award. I have given research papers in Sydney, Venice, London, Berlin, Le Mans, Cambridge, Sheffield, Reading, Bristol and Liverpool.
Recent publications
Committed to working with members of the public to create stories about their past, I am, with Dr Adrian Bingham, a co-director of ‘Stories of Activism in Sheffield, c. 1960-2012’. Working closely with activists and campaigners from the City of Sheffield, the project which collects and archive campaign materials and oral testimonies from Sheffield's activists.
