History research

Overview

Research Contact: Dr Natasha Hodgson

History is situated within the School of Arts and Humanities and engages in research across wide chronological and geographical spans, from the eleventh to twentieth centuries. Particular research strengths include:

• Medieval Studies (Crusades, Heresy, Gender, Social, Cultural and Military History)
• Reformation Studies
• Britain and Ireland (Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries)
• Early Modern Spain and the ‘New World’
• The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade
• The Civil Rights movement
• Twentieth Century History (with a specific focus on WW2, Holocaust and Genocide Studies)
• Memory Studies
• Public History and Heritage
• Digital Humanities

Across this breadth of research interest, our team focus on debates relating to Social and Cultural History; Memory; Identity; Race; Gender and Sexuality; and well as Political and Military History. Our staff employ a variety of analytical and linguistic skills to engage in archival research, textual and material analysis to produce a range of outputs from scholarly articles and monographs to public-facing publications (e.g. East Midlands History) and online articles (The Conversation, History Today,BBC History etc.). They are involved in a variety of partnerships and outreach activities and have a strong social media presence. Research synergies within the team are captured though the activities of two centres: The Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict, and the Centre for Public History, Heritage and Memory, and across the wider university by links to research strands such as Global Heritage.

Centres

The Centre for Public History, Heritage and Memory provides a lively hub for researchers, teachers, practitioners and the public in the connected areas of identity; representation and memorialisation; internationally significant, community-driven and regional history; and museum and heritage management. It explores the cultural significance of the past, challenging current interpretations, exploring points of tension and engaging with the processes of representing History from a variety of perspectives to meet the needs of a range of communities.

The Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict has been established in order to increase understanding of the origins, ideology, implementation, impact and historiography of religion and conflict in the medieval and early modern periods: not just in terms of military engagements but also the social, political, cultural and economic conflicts that were impacted, exacerbated by, or resolved through religious activities and ideologies.

Projects

The following Research Projects are linked to this Subject Area:

• Leading From the Front: Command and Leadership in the British and Irish Civil Wars
• Campaigning in the Crusader States 
• Crusading Masculinities
• From Myth to Majesty: an historical exploration of fifteenth-century British royal genealogies
• Emotional Landscapes in the Early Modern period
• Origins of Identity and Myths of Empire: Spain and Mexico, from the late medieval to the early modern period
• Poverty, Charity and Welfare in Early Modern Scotland
• Legacies of the Holocaust
• Sous les Pavés The Troubles: Recovering Memory of Northern Ireland's 1968
• From Myth to Majesty: An Historical and Scientific Exploration of Fifteenth-Century British Royal Genealogies
• East Midlands Voices
• Community curation and curators: reversing the curator-audience relationship
• The Jewish Brigade Group and Italy
• Memory and Race in the USA
• Mourning as Resistance: Lynching, Memory and Grief
• The Wailing Woman: La Lllorona and Day of the Dead
• Understanding Southwell
• Remembering Children
• Transformative Memory
• The Wailing Woman: La Lllorona and Day of the Dead

Case Studies

The following Impact Case Studies from REF 2014 are linked to this Subject Area:

• Buchenwald Child: Exposing National Myths
• Transforming Visitor Experience Across Museums and Heritage Sites: Museum Organisation and Evaluation

Collaboration

The History team work in collaboration with a variety of institutions and organisations on a variety of research-based projects, some of which involve members of the postgraduate cohort: PhD students and MA students from History and Museum and Heritage Management. These include but are not limited to:

• The British Library
• The British Museum
• Bromley House
• Canalside Heritage Centre
• Digital Arts Lab, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
• The Old Rectory Museum, Loughborough
• The National Civil War Centre, Newark
• The National Holocaust Centre and Museum
• Nottingham Castle Trust
• The National Justice Museum
• The National Arboretum
• REACH project (EU funded ‘Re-designing Access to Cultural Heritage for a wider participation)
• Holocaust Centre Huddersfield
• Warlord Games
• Workhouse Museums Network

Research Staff in History

This list reflects research staff in History only. Our centres are interdisciplinary and so there are more staff attached to other units such as those in Heritage and Languages who work collaboratively with us on projects relating to History. See centre pages for more detail.

• Professor Martyn Bennett - Early Modern social, political and military history, civil wars in Britain and Ireland.
• Professor Graham Black - Museums studies, visitor participation and inclusivity.
• Dr Gianluca Fantoni - Twentieth Century Italian history, the Italian left, Italian post-war cinema.
• Dr Amy Fuller - Early Modern Spain and Mexico, religious drama and iconography.
• Dr Natasha Hodgson - The Crusades, the Latin East, Medieval Gender, Masculinities Heresy, Domesday, Normans, Wars of the Roses, Medieval and Early Modern Religion and Conflict.
• Professor Stephen King – Poverty and Welfare from sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.
• Dr Sergio Lussana - Modern American history, slavery, African-American history, antebellum South, gender, masculinity.
• Dr John McCallum - Early Modern British religious history, the Scottish Reformation, poverty, charity and poor relief.
• Dr Nic Morton - The history of crusading, military orders, inter-faith relations between Christianity and Islam.
• Professor Chris Reynolds – Modern French and Northern Irish history, memory studies, oral histories.
• Dr Jenny Woodley - Modern American history, civil rights and emancipation, black culture, civil war memory.
• Dr Jenny Wüstenberg - Holocaust and Memory Studies; Family separation in history and memory; transnational memory networks and memory activism.

Doctoral Research Students

This is a list of current or recently completed doctoral students studying History at NTU or co-supervised by History staff across NTU and the Midlands 4 Cities doctoral training partnership.

• Giampiero Bagni, The Templars in Bologna.
• Natasha Bailey, (University of Leicester) Nahua women in the pulque trade of early colonial Mexico. M4C
• Matthew Bayly, The Human Ecology of Need on the Lincoln Heath, c.1790-1850
• Jack Beaman, (University of Nottingham) Noble and Non - noble warriors during the crusades.
• Sara Bradley, The nature and role of anti-Spanish sentiment in news and travel-related pamphlets produced in London in the 1580s.
• Richard Bullock, The High Sheriff in Early Modern England.
• Luke Butler, Southeast Asian Illuminated Manuscripts : A Study of the Maritime Silk Road Using Scientific Imaging and Artificial Intelligence. M4C
• Laura Charles, Experiencing Love and Marriage in the East Midlands 1600-1700. M4C
• Edward Cheetham,  Hospital and Healthcare Communities in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire 1900-1939. M4C
• Chris Dodd, Labour's commitment to control hospital capital expenditure through greater economic planning in the 1960s.
• Helen Drew, Social Conduct, Community and the Church Court in Early Modern Nottinghamshire.
• Laura Ewart, Nottingham Playhouse: A Cultural History and Analysis of its Community Engagement M4C
• Helen Gair, The impact of the Reformation on female piety in Early Modern Scotland.
• Heather Green, Critical Approaches to the Interpretation of Literary Heritage: Nottingham as City of Literature.
• Stacey Griffiths, A comparative case study of the origins and spatial practices of three mid-Victorian rural reformatory institutions. M4C.
• Catherine Gower, Nay, they will be kin to us, or they will fetch it from Japheth’: The production, dissemination and use of royal genealogical chronicles in the first reign of Henry VI (1422–61). M4C.
• Catrin Harris, Holocaust Education in Primary Schools.
• Amy Hondsmerck, Playing with Interpretation: The Video Game in the Museum Sector. M4C
• Jeffrey James, Punishment in the New Poor Law workhouse, 1834 - 1884.
• Lucy Judd, Maleficium or Beneficium: Women’s ‘domestic’ knowledge-sharing culture in Early Modern Nottinghamshire.
• Chelsea Kilian, The Emotional Experience of Friendship in Early Modern England.
• Elizabeth Kendrick, The Digitisation and Virtual Future of Holocaust Survivor Testimony at the National Holocaust Centre and Museum. M4C
• Carly-Emma Leachman, The Management of the Health and Social Needs of Displaced People during the Second World War.
• Bethany Marsh, (University of Nottingham)– 'Protestant Martyrs or Irish Vagrants?' Responses and the organisation of relief to Irish refugees in England, 1641-1651. M4C
• Erin Newman, Male and Female Criminals in Seventeenth Century Popular and Court Literature.
• Chris Pickup, From Science to Exhibition: Research, Imaging and Interpretation in the Heritage Sector. M4C
• Lizbeth Powell, The emotional landscape of Sir Thomas Parkyns of Bunny.
• Sophie Rice, Dying well during the British Civil War
• Chloe Riggs, Women and Frontier Society in the Thirteenth Century Levant.
• Mark Robinson, Routiers, Brabancons and Cotteraux: Mercenaries and Crusade in Southern France, 1179-1229.
• Mary Rudling, The experiences of the poor under the Old and New poor laws in Sussex, 1800-1860
• Maxine Spry, The use of angels and angelic motifs in martyrdom treatises during the English Reformation.
• Makiko Tsunoda,  A study of 18th to 19th-century Japanese Nanga Paintings through art historical and material analysis, with a focus on the Nanpin School.
• Caroline Walton, An emotional history of the nineteenth-century workhouse
• Amy Williams, Memory of the Kindertransports in National and Transnational Perspective. M4C profile.
• Hannah Wilson, The Materialisation of Sobibor Death Camp: Artefacts, Narratives and Representation. M4C Profile.