I am Professor of History and director of the University's Heritage Hub. 

I am a historian of protest, social and political movements and contested public spaces in England from the late 18th century to the present day. I also have research interests in 20th century modernist architecture, town and country planning, and landscape change. I am one of the founders of the Rural Modernism research network. 

Publications: 

• Contested Commons: a History of Protest and Public Space in England (Reaktion Books, Sept. 2025)
• New Lives, New Landscapes: Rural Modernity in Britain, ed. with Linda Ross, Matthew Kelly and Ben Anderson (OUP, Proceedings of the British Academy, 2023)
• Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 1789-1848 (Manchester University Press, 2015)
  
• Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798-1815 (OUP, 2009)

My next journal article, 'The development and policing of political processions in London, 1780-1915', will be published in Historical Research. Recent publications include 'Legal and historical geographies of the Greenham Common protest camps in the 1980s', Journal of Historical Geography, 2023, and 'Chartist studies and Malcolm Chase, a reappreciation', English Historical Review, 2023.

I held a fellowship at the Museum of English Rural Life Fellowship, sponsored by the Open Spaces Society in 2020-21,  https://historyofpublicspace.uk/my-oss-fellowship-at-merl-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/ 

Press:

• April 2025, BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, 'General Ludd'
• December 2024, BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, 'Skid Row Messiah'
• July 2024, BBC Radio 4 - Policing Protest series
• 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

I write for a range of publications, including The Modernist, books by the 20th Century Society and Open City London, Tribune, and History Today. I contributed an essay on the history of bins in Joe Lycett's book, Bins (Hurtwood Books, 2023)

I joined the University of Hertfordshire in 2009, following lectureships at the universities of Edinburgh, Bath Spa and Oxford. I read Modern History at St John's College, University of Oxford. I am originally from Rochdale, Greater Manchester. 

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