British Online Archives are exhibiting at ER&L (23rd-26th March). We hope to see you at our booth, 214! Find out more. ✕
Editorial Board
Editorial Board
As part of our editorial process, every new collection is subjected to review by leading academics and experts. We would like to thank the following people for their advice and support:
Professor Simon Ball is the Chair of International History and Politics at the University of Leeds.
Professor Ball's research is concentrated on five interrelated themes: the Cold War; the Second World War; the legacy of the First World War; assassination in international politics; and security & intelligence in the twentieth century. He is also the editor of 'War in History' and sits on the editorial boards of 'Intelligence & National Security' and 'Diplomacy & Statecraft'.
Dr David Kaufman has been a Lecturer in History in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology the University of Edinburgh since 2012. His main area of research is British foreign policy towards Eastern Europe in the era of the Great War. He has written on the Paris Peace Conference and is presently researching the link between revisionism and reparations in the 1920s.
Professor Gaynor Johnson
Professor Emerita of International HistoryUniversity of Kent
Professor Gaynor Johnson studied History at the University College of North Wales, now Bangor University, where she received her BA and PhD. There, she developed an interest in international history, in particular the role of ambassadors in the conduct of British foreign policy in the first half of the 20th century.
Dr Stefan Hördler graduated with a Ph.D. phil. from the Department of History at Humboldt University, Berlin, in 2012. He is currently a research assistant at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, as well as the Director of the Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp Memorial. In addition, Dr Hördler serves on the Advisory Board of the Holocaust Exhibition & Learning Center at the University of Huddersfield.
Emma King
Former DirectorHolocaust Heritage and Learning Centre
Emma King is a museum professional with 17 years of practitioner and consultancy experience across national, independent, and local authority organisations. She served as the Director of the Holocaust Heritage and Learning Centre at University of Huddersfield from 2017-2020.
Dr. Stephen Twigge
Head of Modern CollectionsThe National Archives (UK)
Dr Stephen Twigge is the Head of Modern Collections at The National Archives (UK). Dr Twigge is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Peer Review College, and sits on the Editorial Board of Archives, the journal of the British Records Association. He has published a number of books and articles on the Cold War and has made regular media appearances to discuss record releases at The National Archives.
Ben Holt is a LAHRI Postdoctoral Fellow and Editorial Associate at the University of Leeds. His research is primarily concerned with separatist movements in India’s northeast from the late colonial period through the first decades of independence. This research has led to a primary thematic interest in three core themes, namely intrastate conflict, decolonisation, and borderlands.
Kevin Morgan is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Manchester and recipient of an AHRC Fellowship for the project ‘Communism and the cult of the leader’. Professor Morgan is also the editor of the journal 'Twentieth Century Communism' and a trustee of the Communist Party of Great Britain Archives Trust and the Working Class Movement Library.
Dr Bleddyn Bowen is Associate Professor of Astropolitics at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University and an expert in space warfare and astropolitics. He is the author of two monographs: Original Sin: Power, Technology, and War in Outer Space (Hurst, 2022) and War in Space: Strategy, Spacepower, Geopolitics (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). His research focuses on spacepower and strategic theory; space policy and politics; military space history; technology and modern warfare; international relations, security, and intelligence in space. Dr. Bowen also provided evidence to the UK Parliament on the impact of Brexit on UK-EU space policy and the Galileo satellite navigation system.
Dr. Kristopher Lovell is a lecturer in History at Coventry University. Dr. Lovell's main research interests include quantitative and qualitative analyses of political reportage in the wartime press and the relationship between war and the media in Britain throughout the twentieth century. He teaches the political and social history of twentieth century Britain, war and the media in Britain, and media theory.
Dr. Danielle Young is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of the Ozarks in the United States. She earned her PhD in International Politics from Aberystwyth University in Wales. She has an Mlitt in International Security Studies from the University of St Andrews and an MSc in International Relations from Aberystwyth University. Her research interests include International Relations theory, global security challenges, historical sociology and the history of the modern international system.
Dr. Peter Forsaith is Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, which holds a series of Methodist-related collections. He is a historian of society, religion, and culture in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain and has lectured in Britain and the U.S.A.. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
David Welch is Emeritus Professor of Modern History and Honorary Director of the Centre for the Study of War, Propaganda and Society, at the University of Kent. His research interest is in modern and contemporary political propaganda. In 2013, he co-curated the exhibition on propaganda and persuasion at the British Library and authored the book that accompanied the exhibition, Propaganda. Power and Persuasion (British Library/Chicago University Press, 2013).
Susan A. Petrilli is Full Professor of Philosophy and Theory of Languages at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro,” Italy; 7th Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America; Fellow of the International Communicology Institute (ICI); vice-President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. She has been acting as Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Psychology in the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at The University of Adelaide, South Australia, since February 2016.
Her principal research interests relate to such areas as Philosophy of Language, Semiotics, Ethics, General Linguistics, Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, Communication Studies.
Hilary Marland is Professor of History at the University of Warwick and Founder Director of Warwick’s Centre for the History of Medicine. Her research focuses on the history of psychiatry in modern Britain, prison medicine, migration and mental illness, and the history of childbirth and midwifery. She is lead on a new Wellcome Trust funded project, ‘The Last Taboo of Motherhood: Postnatal Mental Illness in Twentieth-Century Britain’. Hilary is author of Dangerous Motherhood: Insanity and Childbirth in Victorian Britain and Health and Girlhood in Britain, 1874-1920, and her new book, Disorder Contained: Mental Breakdown and the Modern Prison in England and Ireland, 1840-1900, co-written with Catherine Cox, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2022.
Jonathan Andrews is a Reader in the History of Psychiatry, specialising in the History of Medicine and Psychiatry, in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, at Newcastle University. His research interests reside primarily in the history of mental illness, learning disabilities and the history of psychiatry, in Britain, from roughly 1600-1914. He has published 3 monographs in the field, most recently (with Andy Scull) Undertaker of the Mind (University of California Press, 2001) and Customers and Patrons of the Mad Trade (University of California Press, 2003), and previous to this (with Roy Porter et al.) The History of Bethlem (Routledge, 1997). He has published a wide range of articles and chapters on the history of Bethlem and (British) psychiatry/insanity more broadly.
Jennie Grimshaw
Curator, Official Publications and Social PolicyThe British Library
Jennie Grimshaw has worked with the official publications collections at the British Library since 1996, when she was asked to take over as manager of the Official Publications and Social Sciences Reading Room. This was a dramatic change of career direction as she had previously been a cataloguer at the British National Bibliography and subsequently at the Science Reference and Information Service. She has a particular interest in web archiving and has curated themed collections of archived websites on Brexit and all the general elections since 2005.
Adrian's main research interests are in the political, social and cultural history of twentieth-century Britain. He has worked extensively on the national popular press in the decades after 1918, examining the ways in which newspapers both reflected and shaped British society and culture.
Mark Donnelly is Associate Professor and Course Lead for History at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London. His books include Sixties Britain: Culture, Politics and Society, Liberating Histories, which he co-wrote with Claire Norton, and the edited volume Mad Dogs and Englishness: Popular Music and English Identities. He has published numerous articles and essays in the fields of history theory, public history, memory and contemporary cultural politics.
Ruth is a Senior Lecturer in History, with a particular interest in British History in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She is also the programme leader for undergraduate History provision.
Luke J Harris is a British historian with an interest in the history of sport, particularly the Olympic Games. His primary publication is a monograph titled 'Britain and the Olympic Games, 1908-1920: Perspectives on Participation and Identity'. He has also written about athletics, darts, snooker and golf.
Esme Cleall is a Senior Lecturer in the history of the British Empire at the University of Sheffield. She is author of Missionary Discourses: Negotiating Otherness in the British empire, c. 1840-1900 (Palgrave, 2012) and of Colonising Disability: Impairment and Otherness across Britain and its Empire, c. 1800-1914 (Cambridge, 2022). She works on the history of race, gender, and disability in British and imperial contexts, particularly in the nineteenth century.
Chandrika Kaul, D. Phil (Oxon), is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews. Her research is focused on the British media and popular culture, especially the British press and the BBC; the British empire and decolonisation; and the British monarchy. Amongst her books include Reporting the Raj, the British Press and India; Communications, Media and the Imperial Experience; Media and the British Empire; International Communications and Global News Networks; News of the World and the British Press; Media and the Portuguese Empire. She is Founding Co-Editor of the book series: “Palgrave Studies in the History of the Media” (Palgrave Macmillan). She sits on the Advisory and Editorial Boards of Media History (Routledge), Twentieth Century British History (OUP), and Studies in Imperialism (MUP).
Ilya Parkins is Associate Professor of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research expertise lies in fashion, feminist theory, early twentieth century cultural formations, popular culture, and periodical studies. She is the author of Poiret, Schiaparelli and Dior: Fashion, Femininity and Modernity and the co-editor of several essay collections and special issues on fashion, which draw heavily from periodical archives.
Dr Liam J. Liburd is Assistant Professor of Black British History at the Durham University. His research focuses broadly on the ongoing impact of the legacies of empire and decolonisation in modern Britain. His current research focuses on Black radical analyses of fascism and on the question of how historians might use these to transform our understanding of the relationship between British fascism and the British Empire, as well as, more broadly, of the politics of race in modern Britain. He is currently in the process of trying to turn his thesis 'The Eternal Imperialists: Empire, Race and Gender on the British Radical Right' (University of Sheffield, 2019) into a book.
Jeremy Black is a prolific lecturer and writer, the author of over 100 books. Many concern aspects of eighteenth century British, European and American political, diplomatic and military history but he has also published on the history of the press, cartography, warfare, culture and on the nature and uses of history itself.
Catriona is Professor of Modern History and Memory Studies at the University of Exeter. She specialises in the history of nineteenth and twentieth century Britain and Ireland with a particular focus on the relationship between war, empire, experience, and memory. She has published on various aspects of the experience of war and empire and on understandings of cultural historical approaches to the study of modern conflict more generally. Her first book, A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. She has acted as the Middle East consultant for two editions of The Times Complete History of the World (2010 and 2015). She has led or co-led a number of externally funded interdisciplinary research projects with particular emphasis across the intersections of history, politics, education, and memory studies. She is now working on a volume on the British Empire and the First World War as part of OUP’s "Greater War" series.
Andrea Korda is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Alberta’s Augustana Faculty. She is the author of Printing and Painting the News in Victorian London: The Graphic and Social Realism, 1869–1891 (Ashgate, 2015), and a co-organizer of the Crafting Communities project (https://www.craftingcommunities.net/). Her articles on nineteenth-century British visual and material culture have appeared in The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, Victorian Network, the Journal of Victorian Culture, Paedagogica Historica, Word & Image, and Nineteenth-Century Art Online.
Martin Conboy FRHistS is Emeritus Professor of Journalism History and co-director (with Professor Adrian Bingham) of the Centre for the Study of Journalism and History based in Sheffield. He has produced fifteen books on the language and history of journalism and is widely published in scholarly journals. With Professor David Finkelstein, he is the series editor for the three-volume Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press: 1640-2017. His most recent publications are Global Tabloid: Culture and Technology (2021) co-edited with Dr Scott A. Eldridge II (Groningen), Cato Street Conspiracy: Plotting, counter-intelligence and the revolutionary tradition in Britain and Ireland (2019) co-edited with Dr Jason McElligott, with Professor Bingham volume three of the Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press:1900-2017 (2022) and the monograph Journalism, Technology and Cultural Practice: A History (2023) He is active on the editorial boards of twelve journals including Journalism Studies: Media History, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism and Memory Studies. His research has been funded by the AHRC, Marsh’s Library in Dublin and the Dutch NWO.
Andrew Beattie is a historian of Germany, with particular expertise on Germany's transitions from Nazism after 1945 and East German communism after 1989. He is an Associate Professor in German and European Studies in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Dr Alan Malpass joined Bishop Grosseteste University as Lecturer in Military History in 2020. Prior to joining he taught history at Sheffield Hallam University where he completed his doctorate in 2016. Alan teaches the history of war and warfare as well as the ethics of conflict. His interests include the history of civilian and military captivity during war, the British home front and civilian experience of the Second World War, and representations of conflicts and combat in films and board/video games.
Mikkel Dack is a historian of Germany and modern Europe, with a particular interest in political violence, de-radicalization, and democracy. He teaches on topics such as global Europe, World War II, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, radicalism and dictatorships, comparative fascism, and historical methods. His book, Everyday Denazification in Postwar Germany: The Fragebogen and Political Screening During the Allied Occupation, appeared with Cambridge University Press in 2023.
Dr Charlie Hall is a Senior Curator at BOA and a Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Kent. His research interests lie in conflict, technology and society in the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on Britain, Europe and North America.
Dr Henry Irving is a specialist in twentieth century British history. His research interests centre on the Second World War, especially the public’s response to wartime conditions, legislation, and propaganda. He is the communications officer for the Social History Society, an advisory board member of the Centre for the History of People, Place and Community, an active member of the Yorkshire Museums and Academics network, and a regular contributor to History and Policy.
Howard Markel is a physician, medical educator, and historian of medicine. He is the George E. Wantz Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. He is the author of several books. His most recent is “The Secret of Life: Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick, and the Discovery of DNA's Double Helix” (2021).
Paul Slack is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern Social History at Linacre College, the University of Oxford. He has researched the history of disease, especially plague, extensively. He is the author of “The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-Century England” (2014).
Robert D. Hicks directs the F.C. Wood Institute for the History of Medicine at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, where he also holds the William Maul Measey Chair. Prior to this role, he was the director of the College’s Historical Medical Library and Mütter Museum.
Christopher Day is Head of Modern Domestic Records at The National Archives. He specialises in nineteenth century public health and Home Office records.
Mark Honigsbaum is Senior Lecturer in Journalism at City, University of London. He is a medical historian and journalist with wide-ranging interests, encompassing health, science, the media, and contemporary culture. He is the author of “The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria, and Hubris” (2019).
Alexander Medcalf is Lecturer in the History of Science and Medicine at the University of York. He is a historian of visual culture, specialising in public health and medicine, marketing, and transport in the twentieth century. He is the author of “Railway Photographic Advertising in Britain, 1900–1939” (2018).
Sandra Hempel is a freelance writer, editor, and publisher, specialising in health and social issues. She covers health policy and services as well as clinical subjects. She is a member of the Medical Journalists Association and the Guild of Health Writers. She is the author of several books. Her most recent is “The Atlas of Disease: Mapping Deadly Epidemics and Contagion from the Plague to the Zika Virus” (2018).
Jonathan Kennedy is Reader in Politics and Global Health at the Centre for Public Health and Policy at Queen Mary University of London. His research uses insights from sociology, political economy, anthropology, and international relations to analyse important public health problems. He is the author of “Pathogenesis: How Germs Made History” (2023).
Mark Bailey is Professor of Late Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of several books, such as “After the Black Death: Economy, Society, and the Law in Fourteenth-Century England” (2021). Currently, he is interested in reassessing the socio-economic impact of the plague and the decline of serfdom.
James Davey is a historian of Britain and its maritime world, focusing on the Royal Navy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His research and teaching look beyond the traditional remit of maritime history to analyse the political, social, and cultural forces which created the Navy, and which were in turn shaped by its activities. His most recent book, "Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions", was published by Yale University Press in 2023 and argues that this tumultuous period saw sailors become ideologically engaged and politically active. James has also co-edited two books, "A New Naval History" (2018) and "The Maritime World of Early-Modern Britain" (2020). These explore the ways in which maritime and naval history can engage with wider historical scholarship. James is a member of the University of Exeter’s Centre for Maritime Historical Studies.
Pete’s research concerns the history of industry, overseas trade, and transport in the United Kingdom, with a particular emphasis (so far) on the textile-manufacturing regions of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the “long eighteenth century”. His doctoral and initial post-doctoral research focused on Yorkshire and Lancashire’s textile export trade to North America from 1750–1850 and, more recently, he has worked on the industrial and urban impacts of Manchester’s canal network. His first monograph, “Transport and the Industrial City: Manchester and the Canal Age, 1750–1850”, was published by Manchester University Press in 2013.
Pete’s current work focuses on the history of UK cotton-spinning mills (1770–1840). He is also involved in a number of interdisciplinary projects that consider the history and contemporary legacies of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century economic infrastructure and industrial landscapes in the north of England, including on land use and identity in the Pennine moors and on the techniques used to build Victorian railways (and their suitability to upgrade for electrification and “High Speed”).
Jessica Douthwaite is a historian and museums professional currently based at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Her research considers the cultural and social history of the Cold War in Britain and its contemporary impacts on heritage and material culture. Jessica’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership PhD based at IWM, London and University of Strathclyde was titled ‘Voices of the Cold War in Britain, 1945–1962’ and awarded in 2018. She is writing a monograph which explores how the national and international landscapes of post-war Britain contextualised and influenced civilian experiences of Cold War security. She specialises in ethnography, oral history, gender studies and the history of international relations.
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