Research Statement
I am a historian of Britain and the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries, with comparative European, Atlantic, and interdisciplinary interests. Over the past decade, I have explored several areas central to British and European history and the wider humanities, mostly in the period c.1750-1850. My research seeks to integrate the histories of political culture, nationalism, state-formation, and empire with the histories of art, visual culture, archaeology, and collecting. I also explore cultural histories of warfare, commemoration, and memory. I am developing interests in notions of heritage as well as the organization of knowledge in a pre-disciplinary age, especially the early history of archaeology in the British world.
Over recent years I have also become interested in Public History (opens separate page).
For my books click here.
My next book, provisionally entitled “Civil War in the British Empire: Practices and Representations of Violence and Terror in the American Revolutionary War”, is a multidisciplinary study of the practices, representations, and legacies of violence in the American Revolutionary War against the background of the conventions and ethics of 18th-century warfare, and British experiences with civil war and counter-insurgency. While continuing my research on the nature of states and cultural histories of war, this book will allow me to extend my engagement with the imperial, Atlantic, and wider international dimensions of British history. I focus especially on the under-researched perspectives of the British army, its German auxiliaries (“Hessians”), and American Loyalists, which the British state conceptualized as British subjects.
Awards and Fellowships
My research has been supported by the AHRC, a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, and a Visiting Scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, as well as by Fellowships at the John W. Kluge Center of The Library of Congress, The Huntington Library, The Yale Center for British Art, The Lewis Walpole Library, Library Company of Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and DLAR. In 2006, I was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in History.
Among my other publications are -
‘“Struggling Against a Vulgar Prejudice”: Patriotism and The Collecting of British Art at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of British Studies, 49:3 (July, 2010), 566-91.
‘The British State and the Anglo-French Wars Over Antiquities, 1798-1858’, Historical Journal, 50:1 (2007), 1-24. doi:10.1017/S0018246X06005917
‘“The Cheap Defence of Nations”: Monuments and Propaganda’, in M. Philp (ed.), Resisting Napoleon: The British Response to the Threat of Invasion 1797-1815 (Ashgate, 2006), 159-71.
‘Nelson Entombed: The Military and Naval Pantheon in St Paul’s Cathedral’, in D. Cannadine (ed.), Admiral Lord Nelson: Context and Legacy (PalgraveMacmillan, 2005), 115-44.
‘Old Masters and the English School: The Royal Academy of Arts and the Notion of a National Gallery at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of the History of Collections (Oxford), 16:1 (2004), 1-18. doi:10.1093/jhc/16.1.1
‘From Beefsteak to Turtle: Artists’ Dinner Culture in Eighteenth-Century London’,Huntington Library Quarterly, 66:1&2 (2003), 27-54.
‘Reforming Culture: National Art Institutions in the Age of Reform’, in A. Burns and J. Innes (eds.), Rethinking the Age of Reform: Britain 1780-1850 (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 254-70.
Research Strategy
I have a keen interest in the development of research culture and research strategy within and across disciplines, institutions, and sectors (please see also the page on Consultancy).
Research Centre
At Liverpool, I founded the interdisciplinary Research Centre Eighteenth-Century Worlds to promote the historical and critical study of the global 18th century across numerous University departments and several of the city’s outstanding museums.
Conferences I organized include—
Joseph Wright of Derby (2007), University of Liverpool and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
My Books
