Past PhD projects

Browse our past research theses below, or see our current PhD students and their projects.

2023

Elizabeth Blood - The construction history of war memorials in Leicestershire and Rutland.

Paige Emerick - Royal visits within Britain and the formation of National Identity, 1760-1849.

Amanda Gillam - Anglo-Russian Relations 1700-1725, descent into Cold War.

Michael Greasley - Propaganda and the British provincial press in the Anglo-Irish Conflict, 1919-1923.

Carla Herrmann - Medical relief under the Old Poor Law in Hertfordshire.

Michael Morgan - ‘The Tone of My Quarterly Payments’: The Clergy-Laity Relationship in Wilberforce’s Friendship Network (1783-1833).

Raku Nagamine - The Corporation of Chester in the long eighteenth century.

Lauren Parsons - Seeking Justice and Atonement: British Legal Approaches to Mass Murder in the Aftermath of the Holocaust, 1945-1969.

Derek Smith - Guernsey Emigration 1800-1930.

Ellen Smith - Epistolary Labour: A Cultural History of the Imperial Letter and British Family Life in Colonial South Asia, 1857-1921.

Diane Strange -  'The contempt and reproach of this nation': Widows and orphans in the Court of Wards, 1625-1650.

Harry Wilkinson - The Night and Darkness in Anglo-Saxon England.

Megan Yates - Poverty, Work and Punishment: Vagrancy Across the Midlands, 1834 to 1930. 

2022

Natasha Bailey - Nahua Women in the Pulque Trade of Early Colonial Mexico, 1521-1600.

Sue Bishop - Mixed Race Relationships in post-war Leicester: Multiculturalism and the emotional complexities of Female Agency.           

Congjie Cheng - Survivalism and Patriotism of Chinese Local Cliques: From the Perspective of Relationship between the Kuomintang Central Government and the Guangxi Clique during the Second Sino-Japanese War.                      

Maria Christodoulou - Politics and Everyday Life in a Divided City: Nicosia, 1955 - 1974.

Nicholas Cummins - The '"cork" in the bottle': Explaining Reagan's failure to confront Iran.

Paige Emerick - Royal visits within Britain and the formation of National Identity, 1760-1849.

Amanda Gillam - Anglo-Russian Relations 1700-1725, descent into Cold War.

Stanley Hardie - A study of the civil parish of Meare in the Poor Law Union of Well in the County of Somerset with emphasis on the forces leading to decisions to either stay or to migrate from the parish in the period 1851 to 1891. 

Elizabeth Jones - Growth, Identity and Urbanisation. The Impact of Migration on small rural communities in Monmouthshire.

Emmeline Ledgerwood - Re-evaluating the 1980s and 1990s through life histories: politics, privatisation and the culture of government research.

Michael Morgan - 'The Tone of My Quarterly Payments': The Clergy-Laity Relationship in Wilberforce's Friendship Network (1783-1833).

Bradley Phipps - Motherhood and Manhood: Gender in the White Citizens' Councils.

Kimberley Pullen - The Old Poor Law and agrarian change in Leicestershire, c. 1700-1834.         

Nadine Tauchner - Austrian Journalism between Austrofascism, Nazism and Democracy Otto Schulmeister, 1916-2001.

 

2021

Jamie Banks - British Imperialism, Labour Migration, Local Resistance, and the problem of Indian Opium Use, 1858-1912.

Rory Booth - The Realm of Bohemia: Masculinity, the press and Clubland in Late Victorian Manchester 1860-1914.

Janet Couloute - Visual Images of Madness and Distraction in Western Artistic Traditions: Mid Seventeenth Century-Eighteenth Century.

Prinsca Greenhow - Norfolk Pauper Letter 1750-1850.

Georgina Lockton - Science, Technology and Road Safety in the Motor Age

Joshua McMullan - Defending Modernity? Communicating with the Public about Nuclear Energy: Historical Perspectives.      

Annie Platoff - Symbols in Service to the State: The Role of Flags and Other Symbols in the Civil Religion of the Soviet Union.

Jeff Pym - What made possible the first global import of liquefied natural gas from Louisiana into a new North Thames Gas cryogenic storage terminal on Canvey Island in Essex during the winter of 1959? 

Salvatore Valenti - Water in the making of a modern socio-natural landscape: Rome and its surroundings. 1870-1922.

Liz van Wessem - 'Shiten Shepherde and a clene sheep'? Clergy-lay relationships in seventeenth-century Herefordshire.

David Yates - An evaluation of the  criticisms of Grey’s Foreign Policy.

2020

Hubertus Drobner - New Approach to Augustine Of Hippo's Sermons to the People and Its Impact On Augustinian Scholarship

Philip Batman - A comparison of core family survival in Swaledale and York in the nineteenth century.

Denise Bonnette-Anderson - What makes a church or chapel redundant or marked for closure in the modern era in England?

Carrie Crockett - Penal Sakhalin: Forging identity in the Euro-Asian Borderlands.

Anna Harrington - 'The grand object of my Parliamentary existence': William Wilberforce's abolitionism.

Sally Ann Hartshorn - The Heritage of Home:  the role of history in the socio-economic development of Leicester, 1945-2013.

Rebecca Lawton - Anglo-Saxon perceptions of the city of Rome: correspondence and exchange in the 7th and 8th centuries.

Liam McCarthy - BBC Radio Leicester, the 630 Show: How did the social, political and broadcast worlds of 1970s Leicester collide to form the genesis of the BBC Asian Network?

Anna McKay - War and Peace: The History of British Prison Hulks, 1776-1864.

Tamar Moore - Household Medicine, Charity and Welfare: Boughton House and the Montagu Family Estates, 1700-1850.

Janice Morris - The role of elite women in the reception of French émigrés in England, 1789-1815.

Alister Sutherland - Peasant seals and sealing practices in eastern England, c.1200-1500.

Scott Weightman - The "Outward Face" of Massive Resistance: Segregationists’ Media Strategies during the 1950s and 1960s'

2019

Nicola Blacklaws - The Twentieth-Century Poor Law in the Midlands and Wales 1900-c.1930.

Katie Bridger - The Leicestershire Gentry, c.1460-1560: Identity, Locality, and Landscape.

Jill Caine - A study of migratory patterns of four settlements in Lincolnshire, 1851 – 1901.

Joshua Cohen - 'Never Again!' - a command not a slogan: The impact of the Holocaust on British anti-fascism, 1945-67.

Kevin DeYoung - The Problem with John Witherspoon: Reassessing the Presbyterian pastor-president and his relationship to the Scottish Enlightenment.

Cara Dobbing - The Circulation of the INsane: The Pauper Lunatic Experience of the Garlands Asylum, 1862-1913.

Trixie Gadd - Survival strategies of the clergy of Dorset in the 17th Century: economic, political, social and geographical.

Elias Kupfermann - The role of the Castle and Town of New Windsor during the English Civil Wars (1642 – 1650).

Laura Mainwaring - Bringing Regulation to the Market.

Sadie McMullon - Migration to Feltton 1841-1911, An Exploration of Family Migration, the Creation of Community and Social Mobility through Marriage.

Christopher Mitchell - Astrology in England in the Twelfth Century.

Patricia Yewande Okuleye - Selling Health on the World Stage.

Ian Riddell - Kinship Collation: Trends in 19th Century UK kinship networks evidenced from rural Aberdeenshire.

Mrunmayee Satam - Governing the Body- Public Health and Urban Society in Colonial Bombay City (1914- 1945)

2018

Ranjdar Al-Jaf - British policy towards the government of the Mosul vilayet from 1916-1926.

Aaron Andrews - A History of Urban Decline in Britain: Glasgow and Liverpool c. 1960-1990.

Helen Bates - The impact of John, 2nd Duke of Montagu's colonial, industrial and commercial ventures on his national estates, with a particular focus on how his Northamptonshire estates were affected (1700-1770).

Stewart Beale - The experience of war widows and orphans in the Midlands during the mid-seventeenth century.

David Helm - The healthcare economy of Gloucester in the Age of Reform, c.1815 - c.1870.

Sophia Kotzer - Russian Orthodoxy, Nationalism and the Soviet state during the Gorbachev years 1985-1991.

Alessandro Laverda - Revising the Supernatural: The Inquiry on Miracles in Early Modern Canonisation Trials.

Adnan Mohammed - British Representations of the Kurds and the Armenian Question 1877-1908.

Kellie Moss - Convict Connections: The British Empire and the Establishment of the Swan River Colony.

Adam Prime - The British Officer in the Indian Army 1861-1945.

Emma Purcell - Houses and Homes: The Management of a Network of Great Households c. 1709-1827.

Jacqueline Richards - Rethinking the makeshift economy: A case study of three market towns in Dorset in the later decades of the Old Poor Law.

Katherine Roscoe - Island Chains: a spatial history of Australian convict islands.

Matthew Rowley - Godly Violence: Providence, Scripture and Puritan Belief-Formation in War in England, Ireland, Scotland and Colonial America.

Christopher Side - The rise and fall of Hathersage hacklepin making and its effects on the community.

Ann Stones - Charnwood Circles: the role of boundaries in the relationship between people and place in medieval Charnwood Forest.

2017

Musaed Alenezi - Political and economic relations between the Ashraf of the Hijaz and the Ayyubid and Mamluk rulers of Egypt and Syria, 1171–1517.

Charlotte Ball - The symbolic value of the image of the snake in Anglo-Saxon culture, 700-900.

Jennifer Brosnan - A century of bridled behaviour: The transmission of sexual knowledge in Britain 1811-1911.

Matthew Blake - Perceptions of a Mutable Landscape: Dwelling on the Edge, Early Medieval North-West Staffordshire.

Hilary Crowden - The Development of Rutland as a County Community in the Modern Age.

Renato Da Silva - The Northumbrian elite in the 7th and 8th centuries.

Michael Gilbert - The Changing Landscape and Economy of Wisbech Hundred - 1250 to 1550.

Ines Hassen - Inner cities and globalisation: the example of Rheims and Leicester.

Hawkar Jalil - The British Administration of South Kurdistan and Local Responses 1918-1932.

Richard Morris - Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in Cape Town and Hong Kong.

Brenda Mortimer - Penal Reform, The Royal Prerogative of mercy and Robert Peel, Home Secretary 1822-7, 1828-30.

Qadir Muhammad - Kurds and Kurdistan from the viewpoints of British Travellers in the decades 1830-1840 and 1890-1900.

Andrew Ollerton - The Crisis of Calvinism in Cromwellian England: Arminian Soteriology in Anglican and Puritan Thought.

Jane Rowling - The farming community in Yorkshire, 1914 - 1951, through oral history.

Anna Scanlon - Post-war Theatrical Images of Anne Frank in Britain, United States and France.

Martin Watkinson - The microhistory of a Lincolnshire parish: Humberston, 1750-1850.

Hannah Worthen - The experiences of war widows and orphans in mid seventeenth-century England

Valerie Bagnas - Micro-History of Poor Relief Response to Crisis and Dearth: Quainton 1796-180.

Rachel Bennett - Capital Punishment and the Criminal Corpse in Scotland 1740 to 1834.

Joseph Harley - Material lives of the English poor: a regional perspective, c.1670-1834.

Stephen Ling - Canonical Rules in the Carolingian World (Francia and Anglo-Saxon England c. 750 - 987)

Robert Love - Somerset: the journey from Parish Constable to County Police 1835 – 1856.

Philippa Mapes - The Trade and Consumption of English Wallpapers, 1700 – 1830.

Claire Melland - The Anglo-American Special Relationship and the Central African Federation 1957-63.

Kristin O'Brassill-Kulfan - Illicit Mobilities and Wandering Lives: The Criminalization of Indigent Transiency in the Early American Republic.

Matthew Parker - Making the City Mobile: The Place of the Car in the Planning of Post-War Birmingham c. 1945-1973.

Richard Talbot - North South Divide of the Poor in the Staffordshire Potteries 1871-1901.

2016

Ben Harvey - Pauper Narratives in the Welsh Borders: 17500-1840.

2015

Carol Beardmore - The Rural Community through the Eyes of the Land Agent on the Marquis of Anglesey's Dorset and Somerset Estate: William Castleman and His Sons c1812-185.

David Benjamin - Paid Service in Crusading Armies, 1095-1241.

Anna Brueton - Illegitimacy in South Wales, 1660-1870.

Natasha Coveney - Moats in the Landscape: New Perspectives on Moated Sites.

Jonathan Duck - Expressions of meaning and belief in domestic buildings of southern fenland from Burwell in East Cambridgeshire to Godmanchester in Huntingdonshire, between c.1500AD and 1850A.

Maureen Harris - 'A Schismatical people': conflict between ministers and parishioners in C17th Warwickshire.

Richard Harrison - ‘British traffic planning and the urban environment in the 1960s: the cases of Leicester and Milton Keynes’.

Michael Wallace Heaton - A study of how mixed farming fared financially in the interwar years in the area of the Midland Clays.

Geoffrey Monks - Land Management: Welbeck and Holkham in the Long Nineteenth Century.

Roger Morris - Local government, local legislation: municipal initiative in parliament from 1858 to 1872.

Stephen Murray - Bankside power station: planning, politics and pollution.

Adam Richardson - The Fabric of Disintegration – Thomas Manton among interregnum and restoration Presbyterians.

Kinda Skea - Identities and Networks of Nonconformist Ministers (1658-1674)

Emily Whewell - British Extraterritoriality in China: the legal system, functions of criminal jurisdiction, and its challenges, 1833-1943.

Christina Winkler - The Holocaust in Rostov-on-Don: Official Russian Holocaust remembrance versus a local case study.

2014

Alison Brown - Social History of Homicide in Scotland 1836-1860.

Gary Davies - The Rise of Urban History in Britain, c. 1960-1978.

Emma Folwell - From massive resistance to new conservatism: opposition to community action programs in Mississippi, 1965-1975.

Gavin Freeman - Beyond Westminster: grass-roots Liberalism in England, 1910-1929.

Stuart Galloway - The American equal Rights Association, 1866-1870: gender, race and universal suffrage.

Stephanie Rauch - The Holocaust in British Popular Culture: Interpretations of Recent Feature Films.

Tom Hulme - Civic Culture and Citizenship: the Nature of Urban Governance in Interwar Manchester and Chicago.

Janiece Johnson - In Search Of Punishment: Mormon Transgressions & the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Susan Kilby - Encountering the Environment: Rural Communities in England, 1086-1348.

Stefanie Rauch - Making sense of Holocaust representations: a reception study of audience responses to recent films.

2013

Robert Dockerill - Local Government Reform, Urban Expansion and Identity: Nottingham and Derby, 1945-1968.

Geoffrey Hooker - Llandilofawr Poor Law Union 1836 - 1886: 'The most difficult union in Wales'.

Gillian Murray - Women and the work of cultural production in ATV' regional television news, 1956-1968.