Dr Aaron Andrews

I am an urban and digital historian of modern Britain. My PhD (awarded by the University of Leicester) explored the history of the inner city in Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s. After this, I worked at Leeds Beckett University as a Research Fellow on the AHRC-funded project ‘Forged by Fire: Burns Injury and Identity in Britain, 1800-2000’. I was then a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton on the AHRC-funded project ‘Children and young people’s telephone use and telephone cultures in Britain, 1984-1999’. In 2022, I came back to Leicester as Teaching Fellow in Urban Global/Imperial History.

In my research, I have explored the histories of urban inequality, urban disaster, political activism, and everyday life in late twentieth-century Britain. I am currently writing a book on the urban crisis in the UK, based on my doctoral research, and co-writing a book on the history of burns injuries in modern Britain.

On the Forged by Fire project, I co-developed learning resources for primary and secondary school students on the history of the Bradford City stadium fire and the 1963 Colvilles fire. The resources can be accessed through the project website.

On the Telephonic Youth project, I used engaged research methods go gather stories of growing up and using the telephone in Britain from the 1980s onwards. I am interested in further exploring how public engagement can be used as a historical research method.

Aaron Andrews, Alistair Kefford and Daniel Warner, ‘Introduction—Community, Culture, Crisis: The Inner City in England, 1960-1990’, Urban History 50:2 (2023), pp. 202-13. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926821000729

Aaron Andrews, ‘Truth, Justice and Expertise in 1980s Britain: the cultural politics of the New Cross massacre’, History Workshop Journal 91:1 (2021), pp. 182-209. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbab010

Shane Ewen and Aaron Andrews, ‘The Media, Affect, and Community in a Decade of Disasters: Reporting the 1985 Bradford City stadium fire’, Contemporary British History 35:2 (2021), pp. 258-83. https://doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2021.1885376

Aaron Andrews, ‘Dereliction, Decay, and the Problem of De-industrialisation in Britain, c. 1968-77’, Urban History 47:2 (2020), pp. 236-56. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963926819000245

Aaron Andrews, ‘Multiple Deprivation, the Inner City, and the Fracturing of the Welfare State: Glasgow, c. 1968-78’, Twentieth Century British History 29:4 (2018), pp. 605-24. https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwy010

I currently co-convene the first-year survey module HS1002 Shock of the Modern and MA module HS7251 The City in History. I also teach a first-year option on HS1100 People and Places on Black London after 1948. Starting in 2023/24, I will co-convene the new second-year module HS2369 Digital Histories of 1960s Britain.

I also contribute to:

• HS1000 Making History
• HS1013 Modern Britain: The State We’re In
• HS2500 Becoming the Historical Researcher
• HS7310 Global History: Comparative and Connected Approaches

Social media editor, Urban History.
New Researchers Committee, Urban History Group.