Nicola Verdon

Reader in history

Since gaining my PhD in 1999, I’ve held lecturing jobs in several British universities, including Reading, Sussex and here at Sheffield Hallam (twice!).

I am a historian of Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries. The undergraduate modules that I teach reflect this • class, gender and nation, Britain 1790–1914 • poverty in Britain, from the poor laws to the welfare state • roaring twenties, hungry thirties, Britain between the two World Wars. These modules focus on some of the key social and economic changes that occurred in British society and how they affected the ordinary men and women who experienced them. I am also the course leader for the MA in Local and Global History, and welcome any enquiries from prospective students.

My research interests lie in the history of British rural society since 1800, with a particular focus on work and wages, women’s lives and family relationships, and poverty and its eradication. I’ve published in major international history journals and written a book on women who worked on the land in the 19th century (2002). I’m currently working on a book that charts the history of the farmworker in England from 1850 to the present day.

I’ve recently been involved in several media projects as I enjoy communicating my research to a wider public audience. These include BBC’s The Victorian Farm, and Mud, Sweat and Tractors, and museum exhibitions in Brighton (on the Women’s Land Army) and at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading (on women and farming in 20th century England).

Robbie Aitken

Senior lecturer

I joined Sheffield Hallam in September 2010 having been a postdoctoral researcher and later a lecturer in German historical studies at the University of Liverpool.

My research interests are reflected in my undergraduate teaching which covers modern German history, imperial history, and the history of an African presence in Europe.

I teach on the first year module making history, which introduces students to the study of history at degree level. In my teaching I am particularly keen to share with students the range of primary materials that I have collected as part of my own research.

Currently I am completing a co-written monograph (with Eve Rosenhaft) which seeks to render visible the presence and development of an African community in Germany from 1884–1960. This focuses primarily on survival strategies, political and social networks, and identity construction. The extensive archival work I have carried out has included two periods of research in Cameroon. In connection with this project I have published articles in major international journals including From Cameroon to Germany and Back via Moscow and Paris: The Political Career of Joseph Bilé (1892–1959), in the Journal of Contemporary History, 43/4 (2008).

My previous research also focused on migration and the historical creation of racial categories in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa, 1884–1914. This was published as part of Peter Lang’s Cultural Identities series in 2007: Exclusion and Inclusion: Gradations of Whiteness and Socio-Economic Engineering in German Southwest Africa 1884–1914.

Professor Bruce Collins

Professor

I became interested in history as a child when we crossed the Atlantic four times by ship, and Canadian schools I attended taught the early voyages of trans-Atlantic exploration. This interest has since become a passion stimulated by travel, reading, teaching, research and writing.

Although I became a professor in 1988, and have held many academic management jobs, I thoroughly enjoy undergraduate teaching and the challenge of explaining complex developments in accessible, interesting, and stimulating terms.

My module on America since 1968 enables me to test thoughts about, and refine my understanding of, a country which continues to fascinate me. I have visited archives, libraries and universities in 30 of the 50 states and spent a year in Washington, DC. I hope eventually to write a book on the USA 1968-2008 in order to explore that period of conservative responses to the 1960s.

My current writing concentrates on British military and naval power in the nineteenth century. I have published a 500-page book on 1790-1830 and am completing a shorter one on 1830-1902.This work inspires a module on colonial warfare: from India to Iraq.

I remain committed to exploring with students the dynamic interaction of present and past.

Marie-Cecile Thoral

Senior lecturer in modern European history

I joined Sheffield Hallam in October 2010 having been a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of York (2006-2008) and a senior lecturer in modern history at the University of Coventry (2008-2010).

I defended my PhD in France in December 2004. I also passed the French concours of the external Agrégation of History (1999).

I am primarily a French social and cultural historian. My main research interest is in modern French history during the ‘long’ 19th century, from the French Revolution and Napoleonic times to the First World War, with particular emphasis on • the social and cultural history of war • environmental history and the history of medicine • ‘Orientalism’ and cross-cultural interactions between France and the Middle East/North Africa (Napoleonic Egypt and colonial Algeria).

Teaching interests
• war and the making of modern Europe from Napoleon to the Kosovo
• French and British Orientalisms in the Middle East and Asia from the 1790s to the 1960s
• theories of nationalism and democracy

Research projects
• a doctoral research on the limits of centralisation and the functioning of local government in provincial France in the 19th century
• a post-doctoral research addressing the main issues of the place of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in the evolution of warfare (the first instance of total war) and of the impact of those wars on French military and civilians
• I have now started a new research on the medical history of the Napoleonic wars and of the war of conquest and colonisation of Algeria
• I also conduct research on French ‘Orientalism’ and cross-cultural interactions between France and the Middle East/North Africa in the 19th century, from the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt to the conquest and colonization of Algeria. I received recently a small grant from the Pasold Research Fund to conduct research on cross-cultural dressing in colonial Algeria during the long 19th century.

Main publications
• From Valmy to Waterloo: France at war, 1792–1815 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011)
• L’émergence du pouvoir local: le département de l’Isère face à la centralisation (1800-1837), (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010) [Trans.: The rise of local power: the case of the department of the Isère faced with centralization (1800–1837)].
• 'The Egyptian campaign (1798–1801) and French 19th century Orientalism: perception and memory in autobiographical accounts and novels’, in Alan Forrest, Karen Hagemann and Etienne François (eds.) Memories of War: Transmitting the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2011).

Dr Kevin McDermott

Senior lecturer

I have been teaching modern history at undergraduate and postgraduate level at several universities for almost 25 years, 21 of them at Sheffield Hallam.

I specialise in twentieth-century European political history and at present I teach modules on nationalism, democracy and socialism in modern Europe; Eastern Europe, 1945-1989; and the rise and decline of Soviet communism, 1917-1991.

I am particularly interested in the relationship between state and society in totalitarian systems and in the concepts of conformity and resistance as indicators of popular attitudes to the communist state.

I firmly believe that a sound knowledge of history is essential for an understanding of the contemporary world and in this way I try to make history as relevant and lively as possible for my students.

My research interests are in the field of Soviet and Czech history and I have written books on the Czechoslovak trade union movement, the Communist International, and a biography of Stalin. I have also co-edited several works on various aspects of Soviet and East European history and at present I am researching a volume on communist Czechoslovakia, 1945-89 and co-editing an anthology on the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe.

Dr Matthew Roberts

Lecturer

A good chunk of my teaching relates to an increasingly forgotten but crucially important part of modern history – nineteenth century Britain. This was the period when Britain became the workshop of the world and consolidated its position as the foremost imperial power of the age.

What intrigues me most about this period is that, despite all the rapid social and economic changes going on, Britain – unlike a number of its continental neighbours – was not convulsed by political revolution. Political power largely remained in the hands of the aristocracy and the middle class while the working class often found itself excluded.

I am particularly interested in these political developments, especially the attempts by the masses to wrest power from their oppressors and the strategies employed by the elite to deflect and control democratisation. I teach two modules on this: a second-year option called inventing British democracy, 1760-1928 and a third-year special subject called riot, insurrection and reform: Chartism.

Although a historian of Britain, I think it important to situate British history in a broad context. After all, Britain had an empire, and, despite the conflicts of the twentieth century, Britain has often had close links with Europe. I teach an MA module called city, nation and empire, which explores the relationship between Britain and its empire in nineteenth century Britain.

I am currently doing research on Chartism, popular radicalism and electoral reform. I published a book last year which was a critical overview of this research, and was designed largely for students. It is called Political Movements in Urban England, 1832-1914 (Palgrave, 2009).

Recently, I have spent quite a bit of time working at the Electoral Reform Society in London as part of a project which looks at the evolution of Britain’s electoral system from the Victorian period onwards.

Clare Midgley

Research professor in history

My teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels relates closely to my research interests in British imperial history, women’s and gender history and global history. I believe in getting students to engage with the processes of making history through debate and exposure to different perspectives and through working with original source materials.

I have published key books on women’s involvement in the British anti-slavery movement, on gender and imperialism and on feminism and empire. I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and am an active member of the scholarly community at national and international levels. I am currently working on a book that explores links between religious and social reformers in nineteenth-century Britain, America and India.

My historical research connects closely to contemporary political and cultural debates, including interfaith cooperation, global women’s rights and the legacy of slavery. I was involved in various public events around the commemoration for the abolition of the slave trade in 2007 and I am currently historical adviser to a group planning a memorial to one of the founding figures of modern feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft.

My present research connects with my own involvement in Unitarianism and links with a Bengali religious group, the Brahmo Samaj.

Dr Tony Taylor

Senior lecturer

I am a nineteenth and twentieth century British historian with interests across the field.

I have taught at Manchester, Warwick and Sheffield Hallam universities. I am best known for my work on the history of British radicalism, and on republicanism and anti-monarchism in Britain. I have written widely on the subject of radical hostility to aristocracy, and on radical politics and national memory.

In recent years I have moved into the field of empire, and into interdisciplinary studies around the overlap between literature and history. Currently I am writing a book on the uses of popular fiction by historians.

My teaching interests are broad, and include modules on Australian history, the diplomatic history of the Cold War, London, and the intellectual origins of the Enlightenment. I am also the equality and diversity officer for the humanities department.

Professor Matthew Stibbe

Professor of modern European history

Matthew joined Sheffield Hallam in 2003 having previously held lecturing positions at the University of Wales, Bangor, and at Liverpool Hope University.

Since joining Sheffield Hallam, Matthew has taught undergraduate modules on Germany 1914-33, Nazi Germany 1933-39, and Eastern Europe since 1945, and a postgraduate module on Nazism, War and Genocide, 1939-45. His approach is to integrate established frameworks of political history with fresh insights drawn from social and cultural history. In the near future, he is also planning a new final year undergraduate module on Cold War Germany, 1945-68, reflecting the fresh directions which his own research is taking.

His main research interests are focused on twentieth-century Germany, with particular reference to the years 1914-33, and also the early Cold War period. In addition he is interested in civilian internees and prisoners of war across Europe during the era of the two world wars. He lived in Berlin for part of the 1990s and still regularly visits the city.

Matthew’s most recent publications include British Civilian Internees in Germany: The Ruhleben Camp, 1914-18 (2008); and Germany, 1914-1933: Politics, Society and Culture (2010). He has also edited two volumes of essays on post-1945 Eastern Europe with Hallam colleague Kevin McDermott.

John Singleton

Reader in history

I moved to Sheffield Hallam University from Victoria University of Wellington in January 2011. I am an economic and business historian. My main teaching interests are in the areas of British and international economic history from the 18th century until the present day, including the development of the British empire and financial and other economic crises. I am also open to supervising postgraduate students in these fields.

Over the last 10 years or so I have become increasingly interested in financial history. My latest book, Central Banking in the Twentieth Century, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. I have also published books on • the Lancashire cotton industry • the global textile industry • nationalisation in Britain • economic relations between the UK, Australia and New Zealand. I have also commissioned volumes on the history of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and the New Zealand Audit Office.

At the moment the primary focus of my research is popular criticism of banks and bankers since the early 1900s, including the evolution of financial conspiracy theories. I also have a background in the economic and business history of northern England. My PhD, from Lancaster University, was on the history of the cotton industry.

Before moving to New Zealand in 1993, I taught for several years at Lancaster, York, and Manchester universities and the London School of Economics.

My expertise extends to central banking and monetary policy as well as economic and business history.

Dr Alison Twells

Principal lecturer

I joined Sheffield Hallam in 1998, having previously taught at the universities of Nottingham and Humberside. Before doing a PhD, I trained as a teacher of secondary history and worked for three years at the Development Education Centre (South Yorkshire) where I designed a history resource for Key Stage 3 of the national curriculum.

I teach modules on women’s history and public/community history, and a first year module, making history, which is designed to bridge the transition from school to university. I also teach modules on both MAs: on empire and British culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and local and global communities post-1945.

I have research interests in women’s and gender history, local and global history, religious belief and practice, and family and community history. My main research to date has been on the British missionary and philanthropic movements, and on women’s (geographical and denominational) faith journeys in the nineteenth century.

I published a monograph, The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class, 1792-1850 in 2009. Also in 2009, I inherited the most wonderful collection of diaries from my great aunt, Norah Hodgkinson, covering 70 years of her life, and which have given me no choice but to move into the fields of twentieth-century women’s history and life history writing, and to develop longstanding interests in public, community and family history.

I am a committed teacher who is particularly keen to enable students not only to learn about history but to think and work as historians. I am also very interested in the relationship between history in university and in the wider community, and am currently collaborating on a project looking at the incorporation of public history placements and work-based learning into the undergraduate curriculum.

I have had a variety of learning, teaching and assessment (LTA) roles at Sheffield Hallam and am currently LTA lead for the humanities department.

Externally, I am a member of the history subject centre advisory panel, an external examiner at Manchester Metropolitan University, and a member of editorial board for Women's History Review. I was a consultant for items on slavery, abolition and the 2007 bicentenary on Radio 4 and Radio Sheffield, and returned in that year with writing for schools' history, with the production of Olaudah Equiano Visits Sheffield, a Key Stage 2 history resource pack focusing on Black history/Olaudah Equiano's visit to Sheffield in 1790, developed jointly with Sheffield Museums/Burngreave Voices and the Development Education Centre (South Yorkshire).