Academic profiles

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At the same time, I would find the rural poverty, chaotic urbanization, oppressive factory conditions, famine and other social problems of the time difficult to ignore. In any case, as some comfort, Beethoven, Schubert, Rossini, Balzac, Dickens, Goethe and many others were producing masterpieces year after year.

What book would you recommend to a prospective student? 

One aspect that is rewarding from the study of history is a sense of a life in different, changing circumstances. So my recommendation would be the autobiography of Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European.

Zweig, born in 1881, came from a cultured, successful, assimilated Jewish family in Vienna. He would subsequently become one of the most widely read authors in the German-speaking world  until he was forced to flee from Austria in 1934. He sought refuge in Britain, then went to Brazil, where depressed by the war and its effects, he committed suicide in 1942.

Germany, whose culture and language he loved and treasured, was burning his books and systematically killing his fellow Jews.  Zweig – homesick and depressed -  wrote about the world he had lost, yet not with bitterness but with nostalgia and yearning. In his autobiography and through his eyes, we walk the streets of fin-de-siecle Vienna, meet great cultural figures such as Richard Strauss (with whom he collaborated), Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, Romain Rolland and many others, then observe the rise of Fascism and the targeting of Jews.

History is about people and Zweig’s book is one testament to a continued belief in European culture. 

If you could meet any historical figure, which person would you choose and why?

My main area of research has been Austrian liberalism. I would like to meet some of its leaders (who are totally forgotten today) – Eduard Herbst, Karl Giskra, Moriz Kaiserfeld, Josef Lasser, Leopold Hasner, for example – in a Viennese coffee house and ask them questions that have been circulating in my mind for years. What did they read? Who influenced them? Did they have any mentors? What were their guiding principles? What were their goals when they became ministers? How did cabinet government work in 1867?

I would make a recording and I am sure it would be very illuminating. If the conversation flagged, we could fortify ourselves with coffee and cake, then continue onwards. 

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As an English traveller of the Elizabethan period put it, ‘For hard sure it is to know England, without you know it by comparing it with some other Countrey; no more than a man can know the swiftnesse of his horse without seeing him well matched.’

If you could meet any historical figure, which person would you choose and why?

Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, a humanist intellectual of the early 16th century. His mind was piercingly sharp, his satire biting, and his intellect deep, but his sense of moderation and personal diplomacy offered a wonderful sense of balance during one of the most tumultuous periods in European history.

If they could visit Nottingham for a day, where would you take them?

The boating lake (at Highfields Park, adjacent to the University Park Campus). I’d like to row out on the water with him and simply listen to him speak.

If you could travel to any period in history, which would it be and why?

The year 2500. I’d like to know how the future looks back on our own period.

What inspired you to teach your subject?

At the University of Wisconsin in the United States, I benefited from some fantastic professors who conveyed their love of the history, but my study abroad here in the UK (and frequent travel throughout the European mainland) sealed the deal.

By walking the streets, visiting castles and cathedrals, and listening to chatter in the pubs and beer halls, I tried to get a better understanding of European heritage and American origins. I can only hope to convey my own love of the subject to my own students, just as my professors did for me.

What museum or heritage site outside of Nottingham would you recommend to prospective students?

King Richard III Visitor Centre, Leicester.

What history book do you think more people should read?

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776), an abridged version is just fine.

Recommend an online resource which is good for students interested in your research area...

Newberry research library, Chicago, with lots of great material digitized for research and teaching.

What book would you recommend to a prospective student?

Although it is not a work of history, I would strongly recommend Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head: How To Flourish in an Age of Distraction (2015). Crawford is a philosopher-cum-motorcycle mechanic. And in this powerful and wide-ranging book, he challenges many of the assumptions that inform contemporary social attitudes.

What inspires you to teach your subject?

I enjoy guiding students through difficult analytical problems. When a student grasps something that once seemed daunting or unintelligible to them, it is very rewarding.

What areas of your research and teaching are you most passionate about?

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), General Francisco Franco's regime (1939-1975), the Portuguese Estado Novo dictatorship (1932-1974), the far-right in interwar Europe (1919-1939), and Memory Studies.

What museum or heritage site would you recommend to prospective students?

Without a doubt, the Valley of the Fallen, the largest (and most intimidating!) surviving fascist monument in Europe. Wondering where to find the largest Christian cross in the world? Check this out. 

What is your favourite historical film?

Butterfly's Tongue (José Luis Cuerda: 1999). It has English subtitles. You can find more information here.

What history book do you wish more people would read?

Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, revolution and revenge (London: William Collins, 2016). A gripping account of a civil war in an underdeveloped nation that soon turned out to be a pan-European conflict, attracting idealists of all persuasions, and leading to the establishment of four decades of fascist rule in Spain.

Recommend an online resource which is good for students interested in your research area...

The Southworth Spanish Civil War Collection.

What museum or heritage site outside of Nottingham would you recommend to prospective students? 

I'm really not a battlefield person but the Culloden Visitor Centre in Inverness is an excellent resource for understanding the Jacobite rising of 1745 and the history of Highland dispossession. 

What is your favourite historical film? 

My Beautiful Laundrette (dir. Hanif Kureishi, 1985). I also absolutely love Paris is Burning and the recent TV series Pose that is, in many ways, inspired by it.   

What history book do you think more people should read? 

It's not, strictly speaking, a 'history book' but if more people read James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time I think they'd have a much better understanding of racism and marginalisation. 

Recommend an online resource which is good for students interested in your research area:

The Legacies of British Slavery website has a database of British slave-owners who received compensation for the ownership of enslaved people and a whole range of essays explaining how trans-Atlantic slavery and the slave trade has impacted British society today.

What history book do you wish more people would read?

This is actually an article but, 'Haberget: A Medieval Textile Conundrum’, Medieval Archaeology, 13/1 (1969), pp. 148-66, by Eleanora Carus-Wilson (1897-1977). It's a brilliant example of how to uncover a huge amount of information from one small, surviving artefact.

What museum or heritage site would you recommend to prospective students?

The Roman/medieval walls of Istanbul (Constantinople) in Turkey. These massive and spectacular largely surviving defensive stone walls were one of the most elaborate defensive systems ever built. First built in the late Roman period, these walls successfully defended the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire against numerous sieges from the 5th century until the 15th century. Following a six-week siege, the city finally fell from the sheer weight of Ottoman forces attacking it in 1453. Well worth a visit.   

What is your favourite historical film?

Danger Within (1959). The action takes place in a prisoner of war camp in Northern Italy during the summer of 1943. But this is no ordinary war film or POW escape drama, because someone within the camp is murdering the prisoners. Also, the prisoners suspect there is an informant amongst them. They have to find out who the informant is and who is behind these deaths…  Brilliant stuff. 

Recommend an online resource which is good for students interested in your research area...

England’s Immigrants - a huge amount of easily-accessible data on immigration into England in the later middle ages.

What do you wish you had known before starting your undergraduate degree?

This may sound silly: but quite how exciting History is! I contemplated lots of different degrees; History at school I found a little boring. But doing historical research is really different. Digging through old trunks of family photos, letters, papers: often material nobody outside the family has ever looked at before. It makes the past come to life. And it enables us to challenge mainstream historical explanations of why people behaved in the way they did. I love every minute of it! 

What museum or heritage site would you recommend to prospective students?

The National Holocaust Centre and Museum. It's tucked away in the middle of the East Midlands countryside. Not many people know it: but it is an amazing place, and every time I am there, I feel inspired. It gives my work a real sense of moral purpose. 

What is your favourite historical film?

Chimerica. It's a mini series about the famous photo of a man standing in front of a tank on Tiananmen Square. And teaches us a lot about all the wrong conclusions we jump to when confronted with "visual evidence". 

What history book do you wish more people would read?

Unusually for a historian, I am not going to recommend an academic book. Nora Krug's "Heimat", or "Homeland", is a graphic novel, by a German artist who has emigrated to New York. This book combines her drawings, text, and historical photos to take you on her very personal journey of discovery about her family history, and a past that can never be "mastered". 

Recommend an online resource which is good for students interested in your research area...

Hands down best website on Nazism and the Holocaust is by UHSMM in Washington.

I also want to point out a short animated film about our own research, which you can see on the BBC iPlayer: Through whose eyes?

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I would go back and scream, “There IS an alternative” in those fraught, late-night meetings that decided the city’s future. It was a time of great uncertainty and anxiety – crime rates shot up, services broke down and many feared some kind of not just economic but social collapse – but also great political opportunity and artistic creativity and innovation: graffiti arrived on the streets and subways, new art forms were produced, and wonderful music such as early hip hop and punk emerged at this time.

What do you wish you had known before starting your undergraduate degree?

It’s good to talk and share ideas in seminars - you get so much more out of them, and meet new and interesting people. And remember that the loudest or most confident voices in class are not always the most knowledgeable. 

What is your favourite module to teach and why?

I love teaching my Year 3 Special Subject, Life During Wartime: Crisis, Decline and Transformation in 1970s America.

Each year the students tell me how gloomy and depressing the content is, how difficult it is to resolve the “urban crisis” or listen to disco music, but each year they come up with new and amazing ways of conceptualising or making sense of the 1970s. Discussing those interpretations with them and thinking about their application to both my own research and today’s contemporary United States is a real pleasure (and challenge!).

What inspired you to teach your subject?

It has always been important for me that history, as a subject, offered some degree of social or political value, relevance or importance. When I was reading about the 1970s as a graduate student, it seemed to be the period that could explain my times and why the world around me – a world of austerity amidst plenty, inequality, limited faith in government and “experts”, selfie sticks and #YOLO – was the way it was. It suggested history was not just a straight road to “progress”, but it also offered, amongst the gloom, possibilities for change. I wanted to share the importance of the 1970s – and my enthusiasm for the period – with others, and I hope, when they have finished the course, my students feel similarly.

What museum or heritage site would you recommend to prospective students?

The People’s History Museum in Manchester is essential for a different insight into the history of modern Britain – told from the perspective of working people – from the one you’ve often been taught at school. If you’ve just arrived in Nottingham, also check out City of Caves – one of the best introductions to the city you can get.  

What is your favourite historical film?

It’s barely historical, but Do The Right Thing (1989) – a fantastic study of racial division and urban life in 1980s New York. And for a classic Cold War conspiracy, I love The Manchurian Candidate (1962).

What history book do you think more people should read?

In my research area, Kim Phillips-Fein’s book Fear City is one of the best accounts of New York’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s, a critical historical moment which empowered the orthodoxies of market-oriented restructuring and welfare state retrenchment that – at least until very recently – continue to dominate today. And it’s journalism rather than history, but Norman Mailer’s account of the tumultuous political conventions of 1968, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, is the book which drew me into American political history. 

Recommend an online resource which is good for students interested in your research area...

If you like American political history, especially histories of the presidency, and want to listen to presidents and their staff at their most honest (and profane), try the Miller Center and its collection of White House tapes and oral histories.  
 
And for the history of New York, read the blog entries and browse the online archives of the Gotham Center for New York City history.

What do you wish you had known before starting your undergraduate degree?

Three main things: that it's ok not to know and to need to ask (whether about a module topic or additional support); that my ideas and thoughts are just as valid as everyone else's and that everyone (even the tutor) probably felt a little bit nervous sharing their ideas to begin with; and that history is constantly being re-written and that one day I would be contributing to the historiography.

What museum or heritage site outside of Nottingham would you recommend to prospective students?

There are so many, but I will limit myself to two linked to my research interests and a more general one.

Firstly, the Museum of English Rural Life - so many students say they don't have opportunities to read histories of the countryside or environment at school, and this is a fantastic place to discover more. 

Secondly, the Wellcome Collection for medical and health related collections.

And thirdly, I would recommend your local museum or heritage site - these often hold fascinating collections which can connect the local with the national or even global and provide a tangible link with the past on our very doorsteps.

What history book do you think more people should read? 

Based on my research interests, the books I think more people should read would include Nicola Verdon's Working the Land, Claire Hickman's Therapeutic Landscapes, Waltraud Ernst's Work, Psychiatry and Society, and Corinne Fowler's Green Unpleasant Land.

More generally, I would recommend that history students (or people thinking about studying history) read What is History, Now? by Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb which explores how the past and present can speak to each other and includes chapters on histories of disability, sexuality and ethnicity, historical movies and museums, why family history matters, and why history should always be rewritten.

Recommend an online resource which is good for students interested in your research area:

LIBRAL - the library of rural and agricultural literature for hundreds of historic books related to the history of the countryside.

Also, the Museum of English Rural Life for online exhibitions.

For health histories, the Wellcome Collection.

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Thematically, I am mostly interested in cultural, social and political history – that’s to say, the way people lived their lives; how film, art and literature portrayed people’s lives; and how governments shaped the identities and experiences of social groups and individuals, for example by ideology, propaganda and violence. 

What is your favourite historical film?

I’m a bit of a fan of historical films (I used to teach a module on this!), so find it hard to name one favourite. The German film The Lives of Others (2006) about the East German secret police and dissident intellectuals is very gripping. For a lighter look at East Germany and the country’s re-unification, I’d suggest Good Bye Lenin! (2003). 

What do you wish you had known before starting your undergraduate degree?

That speaking in front of other people isn’t so scary, once you know that most people are as scared as you. That history isn’t so much about what you know (the ‘facts’) as about how you acquire knowledge and present it to others (the ‘research process’ – historical skills - and argument).

Appreciating that has really changed the way I read books and articles, as well as the way that I write.

What museum or heritage site outside of Nottingham would you recommend to prospective students?

There are innumerable fantastic places to visit. I adored castles when I was a child and still visit castles whenever I can (although I study modern history).

Battlefields can be very evocative, if you see the historical events in your mind’s eye when you visit. But also I recommend just finding out a bit about the history of the place you live in, walking around the streets (or fields) and trying to visualise how people in the past saw it, experienced life there – and thinking about how everyday places have shaped everyday lives, which are just as interesting (more so!) than the lives of ‘great men’ (and the occasional ‘great woman’) in history.

My favourite place is Moscow, a city I know really well. Every street and building evokes the past for me, even as the city itself has changed over the years I’ve visited (in parts, beyond recognition). 

What history book do you wish more people would read?

Sheila Fitzpatrick’s work on how Russians lived in the Soviet 1930s, Everyday Stalinism, is brilliantly researched, well-written and really insightful. For an overview of Soviet history, you still can’t beat Geoffrey Hosking’s very readable History of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991. I love everything by Robert Darnton, a cultural historian of eighteenth-century France (you probably know his book of essays The Great Cat Massacre), and AJP Taylor’s always fun to read – very opinionated and incisive in his analysis.

Recommend an online resource which is good for students interested in your research area...

Definitely 17 Moments in Soviet History 

What museum or heritage site outside of Nottingham would you recommend to prospective students?

One which stands out as a really enjoyable memory is Alnwick Castle in Northumberland  – there’s so much to see there (and it was used in the Harry Potter movies).

I have to recommend the National Civil War Centre in Newark, as I work closely with the staff there.

If you ever travel as far as the USA, then the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming is fabulous – but be warned you will need at least a couple of days, as there is so much to see, including artefacts relating to Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull and Chief Red Cloud. 

What is your favourite historical film?

By far and away the best history film I’ve seen recently is Napoleon (2019), starring Tom Burke and Rob Brydon. The Duellists (1977), starring Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel is also set in the Napoleonic period, and is very atmospheric.

One film which hilariously explores the love-hate relationship between historians and filmmakers is Sweet Liberty (dir: Alan Alda, 1986), starring Michael Caine, Michelle Pfeiffer and Alan Alda.

What history book do you wish more people would read?

Margaret MacMillan's The Uses and Abuses of History (London, 2010) on how history is often hijacked for political agendas through suppression, manipulation, and sometimes outright deception.

Recommend an online resource which is good for students interested in your research area...

I’m part of a big project which is working with archives around England and Wales in order to recover the lost stories of maimed veterans and war widows between 1642 and 1710.

This resource is absolutely free to use, publicly accessible, and is growing bigger by the month: Civil war petitions.

Maybe start by checking out our blog section!

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Medieval English kings didn’t much like sharing, however, and there were political crises, depositions, rebellions and civil wars aplenty. This makes the period fascinating to teach and to learn about.   

What do you wish you had known before starting your undergraduate degree? 

That writing a history essay is not about learning facts and regurgitating what historians have written (well, there is a bit of this), but is much more about developing your own ideas and theories, and being creative (not with the truth, with your ideas and theories!).

If I’d known this I’d have found writing essays much more enjoyable and fulfilling from the outset.  

What is your favourite historical film? 

I have two. First up: Braveheart. It takes all sorts of liberties with the historical truth, but who cares: it’s wonderfully entertaining, the battle scenes were the first ever to be done realistically, and Patrick McGoohan as Edward I – he IS Edward I in my eyes!

Second: Where Eagles Dare. Brilliant in all respects. 

What history book do you think more people should read? 

1066 And All That. A reminder not to take history too seriously. 

If you could meet any historical figure, who would you choose and why? 

Richard III. So I could ask whether he really did kill the Princes in the Tower.

What inspired you to teach your subject? 

Two things. First, the period itself – it is just so interesting. I got hooked when I studied it at University (having never studied medieval history previously).

Second, I was fortunate in having a wonderfully inspiring university lecturer who opened my eyes to the possibilities of studying the period, researching it, and eventually teaching it!

What is your favourite historical film?

Tous les Matins du Monde (1991), set in the court of Louis XIV.

What history book do you think more people should read?

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman (1959)

Recommend an online resource which is good for students interested in your research area...

The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England. An invaluable resource containing the translated records of every parliament from Edward I to Henry VII.  

If they could visit Nottingham for a day, where would you take them?

Nottingham Castle – following its £29m makeover – would be a must-see attraction. For a mixture of history and open space, Newstead Abbey or Wollaton Hall are conveniently located. Walking anywhere in Nottingham’s green spaces – whether those preserved within the city or more famous attractions like Sherwood Forest – would allow time for a proper chat!

If you could travel to any period in history, which would it be and why?

I suspect I would still feel a stranger in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain, in spite of working on this area for most of my active research career!

Nevertheless, it would be good to be a ‘fly on the wall’ in London in the time of the French Revolution or, for a contrasting experience, eavesdrop on conversations in Thomas Hardy’s Wessex or Jane Austen’s Winchester.

What is your favourite module to teach and why?

I particularly enjoyed developing my third year optional module on social satire and political caricature in Britain from 1750-1850. The sources are so fresh, lively and humorous, yet it can be challenging to understand all the detail. It was a long-held ambition to develop the module and I have always enjoyed teaching it.

What inspired you to teach your subject?

A mixture of inspirational teachers and the ‘spark’ which got me into history from childhood. Reading about the past and visiting the places where ‘history’ happened has always been a fascination. The older you get, the more important this becomes.