I am a historian of 19th and 20th century British and Irish history with a particular focus on the social and cultural history of the First World War and British imperial activity in the Middle East since the 1880s. I am intrigued by the experiences and recollections of ordinary people and communities in global war, as well as the on-going (and often bloody) relationship between current conflict and imperial pasts.

 

I specialise in the history, representation, and memory(ies) of modern conflict and empire. My first book, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (OUP, 2012), released on the eve of the centenary anniversaries of the war, resulted in my involvement with several government and community-level commemorative activities. This fuelled my interest in exploring the ways in which young people engage with the cultural memory of historical conflict and the experience and implications of placing young people ‘front and centre’ of state-orientated commemorative activity. I have led two AHRC-funded projects on these themes and was Academic Lead for the UK’s flagship youth centenary initiative ‘The First World War Centenary Battlefields Tours Programme’ (2014-2019) and a co-designer of the Falkland Islands Government 'Falklands Forty Schools Competition' (2022). I remain involved in a wide variety of interdisciplinary research projects across History, Memory Studies, Education, Critical Military Studies, Political Geography, Literature, Sociology, and Digital Humanities. I have had the privilege of working with external stakeholders across the UK, the UKOTs, Australia, Cambodia, Canada, Iraq, Ireland, Jamaica, Jordan, New Zealand, Pakistan, Palestine, and Uganda.

 

The four key areas of my research and impact interests are:

1. Socio-cultural history of modern conflict

2. The history and politics of empire and war, 1800 - present

3. Commemoration, geo-politics, and young people

4. Education, Justice, and Peace Studies

 

For a current list of externally funded projects, please refer to Research interests below.