Research students
Below is a list of some of our current and recently completed research students.
If research students would like to add a short biography about their work to the list, please send it to Alison Watson
Nicholas Adams - Supervisor: Marybeth Hamilton - Area of research: Socialist Utopias
Matthew Annis - Supervisor: Marybeth Hamilton - Area of research: Chinese Railroad labourers in mid-late 19th century. My thesis focuses on how the "Chinese Question" transformed the "Labor Question," exploring how the intersection of race and class came to redefine capital/labour relations. I have a BA (Hons) in American Studies and History, and a MA in American History from the University of Sussex.
James Arnold - Supervisor: Julian Swann - Area of research: The cultural history of music in the French Revolution. Opera was a major form of mass culture at the time, and a study of its evolving significance and usages -- neglected so far by historians -- could give us an insight into the way mentalities and social conditions developed during this viciously contested period.
Loukas Balomenos - Supervisor: Chandak Sengoopta - Area of research: Technologies of social knowledge: Scientific methodologies of conceptualising poverty in Britain, late 19th-early 20th century.
Ruth Beecher - Supervisor: Marybeth Hamilton - Area of research:
Christina Bellorini - Supervisor: John Henderson - Area of research: The development of botany in sixteenth-century Italy and its influence on the theory and practice of therapy.
Harman Bhogal - Supervisor: Michael Hunter - Area of research: Demonic possession in Early Modern England.
Stephen Brogan - supervisor: Michael Hunter - Area of research: the healing of scrofula – or the King’s Evil - by the royal touch during the early modern period. I am particularly interested in the cultural context of the royal touch; the intellectual debates concerning miracles, divine right monarchy, and the decline of magic; and the visual images that provide a vivid evocation of the ritual. My research is focused primarily on England but consideration is given to France too, for example when discussing the origins of the healing practice.
Brandon Broll - Supervisor: Hilary Sapire - Brandon is a science journalist in London having studied natural science in South Africa. While there in the late 1980s he was political editor of the Civil Rights League during the days of apartheid. His interests are the role - both national and international - that liberals played fighting against apartheid and in this regard he is researching the History of the Civil Rights League of South Africa (1948-1994).
Susan Carr - Supervisor: Julian Swann - Area of research: The Burgundian nobility in the 18th century.
Mihaela Ciausescu - Supervisor: Ian Haynes - Area of research: The development of the ceramic industry and exchange networks in the province of Dacia by establishing a Roman Fabrics Reference collection.
Stephen Cornish - Supervisor: Vanessa Harding - Area of research:
Hazel Croft - Supervisor: Joanna Bourke - Area of research: War neurosis in the civilian population in Second World War Britain. The research will examine how the diagnosis of "war neurosis" was constructed and theorized in medical and psychiatric thought and the social, political and medical contexts in which it was applied to civilians.
Susan Dale- Supervisor: Michael Hunter - My work is on Sir William Petty (1623-1687) and his religious, political and social reform proposals in the 1680's.
Cormac Deane – Supervisor: Joanna Bourke – Area of research: Terrorists and counter-terrorists in Hollywood film and television of the last two decades. The research offers legal and political explanations for the aesthetic characteristics of these fictions. Cormac is enrolled at the London Consortium.
Christopher Dillon - Supervisor: Nikolaus Wachsmann - Area of research: The SS personnel of the Dachau concentration camp 1933-1939.
Sarah Duff - Supervisor: Hilary Sapire - Area of research: My thesis explores the ways in which ideas about childhood changed as a result of the Dutch Reformed Church's evangelical movement in the Cape Colony between 1860 and 1902. One of the aims of my research is to establish a firm foundation on which histories of childhood in South Africa can be built. I have a BA (Hons) and MA degrees in history from the University of Stellenbosch.
Christos Efstathiou - Supervisor: David Feldman - Area of research:
Rowan Gemei-Macauslan - Supervisor: Nikolaus Wachsmann - Area of research: Belsen medical students
Giselle Glasman - Supervisor: Christy Constantakopoulou - Area of research: Ancient Greeks and the sea.
Clare Goudy - Supervisor: Catharine Edwards / Judith Hawley (RHUL) - Area of research: I'm working on the reception of Juvenal in the early 18th century, with particular reference to the poetry of Jonathan Swift.
Linda Grant - Supervisor: Catharine Edwards and Sue Wiseman (School of English) - Area of Research: My thesis explores the English Renaissance literary reception of Latin erotic elegy (Catullus, Propertius, Ovid, Sulpicia) with a particular focus on the love lyrics of Wyatt, Sidney, Donne and Wroth. I am especially interested in the way the conventions and pressures of genre might condition, and sometimes constrain, narratorial gender regardless of the biological sex of the author.
Andrew Green - Supervisor: Ian Haynes - Area of research: My main research interests lie in Roman archaeology and archaeological theory. My thesis work is centered on the landscape archaeology of "Romano-Celtic" sanctuary sites in the north-western provinces of the Roman empire and their Iron Age antecedents. I am approaching this subject through an approach that uses both the technology available in geographic information systems (GIS) and experiential or phenomenological approaches to archaeology. The work of Chris Tilley in The Phenomenology of Landscape is a key influence on my work. More generally I am interested in topics in archaeological theory and the interdisciplinary relationship between archaeology and anthropology, philosophy, geography and sociology.
Peter Hayden - Supervisor: Catharine Edwards - Area of research: Aspects of Senecan Tragedy
Richard Hebditch - Supervisor: David Feldman - Area of research: How charities helped immigrant groups in London, 1800-1850.
Julia Hoerath - Supervisor: Nikolaus Wachsmann - Area of research: The establishment and extension of early Nazi concentration camps.
Simon Huxtable - Supervisor: Orlando Figes - Area of research: The Soviet press in the 1960s.
Louise Hide - Supervisor: Joanna Bourke - Area of research: Gender and asylums
Annette Jander - Supervisor: Joanna Bourke - Area of Research: My area of research is the Working Conditions of War Reporting in the Vietnam War 1961-75. Focusing on autobiographical and biographical sources and on the American and South Vietnamese press policy, the study examines the influence of the reporters' working conditions on the war reporting from South Vietnam. The Vietnam War reporting is set in the historical context of war reporting before and after. The aim of the study is to show how far war reporting is determined by changing working conditions and a discussion of the ramifications for the reporters and their profession.
Jane Keegan - Supervisor: John Arnold - Area of research: The Meanings of Food in Western Europe of the High Middle Ages.
Sue Kentish – Supervisor: Fred Anscombe – Area of research: Ottoman- British relations in the age of revolution, 1789-1839.
Rachael Lazenby - Supervisor: John Arnold - Area of research: A Comparison of the Interrogative techniques used in the inquisition, Canonization and Enquetes Processes in the 13th Century France.
Clare Leeming-Latham - Supervisor: Chandak Sengoopta - Area of research: Factors that influenced the treatment and control of Tuberculosis in England from 1882.
Geoff Levett - Supervisor: Hilary Sapire - Area of research: Sport, Colonial Identity and Empire 1900-1914. Publications: 'Constructing Imperial Identity: The 1907 South African cricket tour of England' in Empire and Cricket, the South African experience, 1884-1914 (UNISA Press, 2009); 'Sport and the Imperial City: Colonial Tours in Edwardian Britain' (London Journal, forthcoming).
Marilyn Lewis - Supervisor: Michael Hunter - Area of research: The educational influence of Cambridge Platonism, with special reference to Christ's College, Cambridge, 1641-1688. This research identifies twenty-nine authors who were undergraduates at Christ's while Henry More was a fellow and Ralph Cudworth was master. Their writings and lives are examined with reference to the personal influence of their tutors, other influences from their backgrounds, friendships and current events, and their reaction to the pervasive atmosphere of Cambridge Platonism in the college. Conclusions will focus on how intellectual influence was transmitted through the Oxbridge tutorial system as well as on the development of Cambridge Platonism.
Sarah Longair - Supervisor: Hilary Sapire - Area of research: The development of historical and cultural representation in museums in Zanzibar from the colonial to the contemporary.
Hilary Maddicott- Supervisor: Barry Coward - Area of research: The political and cultural career of Philip Sydney, Lord Viscount Lisle, 3rd earl of Leicester, 1619-98.
Clare Makepeace - Supervisor: Joanna Bourke - Area of Research: A Cultural History of British Prisoners of War in Occupied Europe, 1939 to 1945. My research will explore the subjective lives of British prisoners of war from the moment of capture through to commemoration.
Catherine Meaden - Supervisor: Michael Hunter - Area of research: Medical books and the distribution of medical knowledge in the early modern period.
Ashleigh Melvin - Supervisor: Joanna Bourke - Her research centres on the roles of religion, spirituality, myth, prayer, and mysticism in front line, Great War soldiers and how those roles are portrayed in their correspondence and recollections, and likewise, might be altered outside the war experience. She is particularly intrigued by fluctuating contexts of masculinity in wartime correspondence and what they say about the development of religion as much as the development of the history of emotions. She holds an M.A. in English Literary Research where her dissertation centered on the homoeroticism of war poetry and a B.A.(Hons.) in English Literature and History.
Jacob Middleton - Supervisor: David Feldman - Area of research: Corporal punishment within mainstream education 1880-1947.
Nadiya Midgley - Supervisor: Michael Hunter - Area of research: Organic Theories of the Earth (c. 1680 – c. 1720). I'm looking at organic ideas in publications concerning Theories of the Earth that were written in this period. These theories dealt with the earth's history, its age, and ideas about fossils, earthquakes and comets. I am focusing specifically on Thomas Robinson's books, which have been largely overlooked in favour of more famous theories (such as Thomas Burnet's 'Sacred Theory of the Earth').
Jill Moore -Supervisors: John Arnold & Filippo De Vivo - Area of Research: The inquisition in Italy 1200-1350. My research focuses on the development and organisation of the medieval inquisition, and its relations with other ecclesiastical and secular authorities. It compares the differing regional approaches of Dominican and Franciscan inquisitors and examines their career trajectories. I have a BA in History and English from York, an MA in Medieval History from Birkbeck, and have published on medieval Italian exploration.
Paul Moore - Supervisor: Nikolaus Wachsmann - Area of research: The relationship between the Nazi regime and the public in reference to concentration camps.
Susan O'Halloran - Supervisor: Christy Constantakopoulou - Area of research : Patterns of exile and mobility in archaic and classical Greece
Ayse Ozil - Supervisor: Fred Anscombe - Area of research: Ottoman Greeks in the region of Bursa.
Alena Papayanis - Supervisor: Joanna Bourke - Area of research: 'Vietnam ' in the age of Iraq. The cultural capital of Vietnam veterans, and their self-constructions as post-war beings.
Neil Penlington - Supervisor: Joanna Bourke - Area of research: Masculinity and Male Heterosexuality in Britain, 1918-1961. Male heterosexuality is invisible or taken for granted in the historiography of twentieth-century Britain. This research will examine the subjectivities of men as they strove to be ‘normal’, and the impact of ‘normality’ on social change and social policy.
Maryam Philpott - Supervisor: Joanna Bourke - Area of research: Notions of motivation and attitude in the forces during the First World War, with particular attention to those other than the Army (especially the Royal Flying Corps and Navy).
Clare Pickersgill - Supervisor: Ian Haynes - Area of research: Roman pottery from Sparta
Lucy Pollard - Supervisor: Catharine Edwards - I am researching Britons in Greece and Asia Minor, 1603-88. I am particularly interested in their attitudes to the people they encountered, their use of classical and other texts, and their observation and/or collection of antiquities, and also in how their attitudes were shaped by their (usually classical) education.
Jeffrey Porter - Supervisor: Nikolaus Wachsmann - Area of research: Restitution of Germans dispossessed by the Nazis, especially on racial grounds.
Rachel Richardson - Supervisor: Joanna Bourke - Area of research: Cultural history of the British on the Balkan front during the Great War.
Clare Roche - Supervisor: Daniel Pick - Area of Research: An investigation into the motivations and activities of women climbers and travellers in the Alps 1850-1900, with particular reference to whether they challenge the conventional historical view of middle-class femininity. Health, fitness and exercise plus issues of landscape, identity, independence and gender perceptions will be central to my study.
Wesley Rykalski - Supervisor: Caroline Humfress - Area of research: Venantius Fortunatus - his role in late 6th century Merovingian elite life.
Nathaniel Sloane - Supervisor: Chandak Sengoopta - Area of research:
Miu Sugahara - Supervisor: Vanessa Harding - Area of research: The management of grammar schools in the suburbs of London, late 16th - early 17th centuries.
Geoffrey Sumner - Supervisor: Joanna Bourke - Area of research: The persistence in the period 1880 to 2006 of what will be termed ‘the British beef myth’, according to which a tradition of beef-eating had given the British people physical, mental and moral strengths that had in turn contributed to British national strengths. It will be argued that this nutritionally spurious yet culturally potent cluster of ideas continued to affect British mentalities and behaviour to a greater extent than has generally been realised. The ultimate aim is to relate manifestations of the myth to aspects of British national identity.
Michael Townsend - Supervisor: Michael Hunter - Area of research: The plague in English medical literature from the 14th to the 18th centuries.
Megan Trudell - Supervisor: Lucy Riall - Area of research: Nation building in Italy.
Thomas Turner- Supervisor: Marybeth Hamilton - Area of research: The study of the cultural significance of the trainer in Britain and the United States.
Jane Vokins - Supervisor: David Feldman - Area of research: Industrial relations and the steam locomotive crew 1841-1851.
Victoria Whitton - Supervisors: Caroline Goodson, Caroline Humfress - Area of research: Catacomb organisation and spiritual topography of Late Antique Rome.
Marc Widdowson - Supervisor: Matthew Innes - Area of research: Merovingian and Visigothic succession.
Daniel Wilson - Supervisor: Daniel Pick - Area of research: The idea of the machine c.1900. See http://www.danielwilson.info
Kim Wunschmann - Supervisor: Nikolaus Wachsmann - Area of research: Jewish Prisoners in Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933 – 1939. Jews were among the first prisoners taken into ‘protective custody’ in Nazi concentration camps – arrested for diverse reasons but forced into one group constituted purely on racial grounds. In a twofold approach, I study the specific experiences of Jewish inmates in the camps’ context of violence, their relationship towards the SS and other prisoners, as well as the dynamics within the group itself. Secondly, I aim to analyze the overall function of Jewish camp-imprisonment for the regime’s anti-Jewish policies. By anchoring concentration camp imprisonment in the overall context of Jewish persecution this research aims to develop new trajectories in the history of the Holocaust.