I am Professor of History. I am an expert in the history of protest and collective action, and contested public spaces in England from the eighteenth century to today.

I take a cross-disciplinary approach in social and political history, cultural geography and digital humanities. I promote regional heritages and community co-production of research. I am director of the University's Heritage Hub.

Research interests:

• popular democratic and social movements 1760s-2000
• the history of public space and open spaces preservation
• modernism, planning and landscape in 20th century Britain

Publications: 

• Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 1789-1848 (Manchester University Press, 2015)
  
• Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798-1815 (OUP, 2009).

I am currently working on my third monograph, working title, Contested Commons: Protest and Public Space in England. My most recent publication is 'Legal and historical geographies of the Greenham Common protest camps in the 1980s', Journal of Historical Geography, 2023.

I was awarded a fellowship in 2020-21 at the Museum of English Rural Life Fellowship, sponsored by the Open Spaces Society, undertaking a project on their archive collections. https://historyofpublicspace.uk/my-oss-fellowship-at-merl-2021/ . 

My Royal Historical Society lecture, 'The right of public meeting from the Bill of Rights to the Public Order Acts', 5 February 2021 is available online:  https://royalhistsoc.org/virtual-lecture-5-february-2021/ 

I was awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship 2018-19 for 'The history of public space in England, 1700-2000'. See the website: http://historyofpublicspace.uk/ 

Recent press:

• October 2022, BBC Radio 4 - Analysis, What's the point of street protest? 
• Dan Snow's History Hit podcast, 'The Enclosures', 2022: https://uk-podcasts.co.uk/podcast/dan-snow-s-history-hit/the-enclosures
• interview by Bill Bailey on BBC One Show, 1 March 2021, on the history of public footpaths: https://youtu.be/eOymGX0umls
• interview on BBC Newsnight for the bicentenary of the Peterloo Massacre, August 2019, https://youtu.be/UMig-6w2gNM

Background:

I am from Rochdale in Lancashire. I read Modern History at St. John's College, Oxford, and taught at the universities of Oxford, Bath Spa and Edinburgh before joining Hertfordshire in 2009. 

I am supervisor for these postgraduate students:

- Peter Elliott, PhD, ‘The origins and development of aircraft museums in the UK’

- Pauline Schofield, PhD, ‘A Life Geography of L. Edna Walter B.Sc., O.B.E. (1866-1962), Woman of Science, Agent of the State, Mountaineer: Women’s Emancipation at the Intersection of Space, Place, Gender and Power’

- together with supervision of students on the professional doctorate in Heritage

I welcome students wishing to study 18th and 19th century British history, particularly relating to regional history, social movements and popular politics, 20th century modernism, landscape, historical and cultural geography, and digital history.

I am the director of the university's Heritage Hub, connecting academics and heritage institutions

I am an editor of the UH Press book series Explorations in Local and Regional History

I have worked with several HLF funded community projects, including Kennington Chartist Project 2018 and the Peterloo 2019 commemorations.

Media and public engagement:

• BBC Radio 4, 'Analysis', October 2022: BBC Radio 4 - Analysis, What's the point of street protest? 
• BBC One Show, 1 March 2021: https://youtu.be/eOymGX0umls 
• BBC Two Newsnight: https://youtu.be/UMig-6w2gNM
• BBC Radio 4 Today programme: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0000xqb (1:24-27)
• BBC Radio 4: British Socialism: the Grand Tour, programme 2, Chartism: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09ry6jr
• BBC Radio 4: Melvin Bragg's The Matter of the North: the Radical North, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07syyrh
• BBC 2: 'Exploring the Past: Protest', on the Peterloo Massacre: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02jg2hp
• BBC Radio 4: Voices of the Old Bailey, series 2, programme 1, 'Riots'
• BBC Radio 4: Today programme feature on the Luddites
• BBC Radio 3: 'Were the Luddites Right?' public debate at the 'Free Thinking' festival at the Sage, Gateshead
• BBC Radio 3: Nightwaves discussion on the Luddites