Dr James Moore

I received my first degree in politics philosophy and economics from Christ Church University of Oxford and my PhD in British political history from the University at Manchester. I subsequently held an AHRB postdoctoral position at Manchester followed by a Lectureship at Lancaster University. I spent four years at the Institute of Historical Research London before obtaining a Senior Lectureship at the British University in Egypt. I am involved in a number of international collaborations and am Director of the Cairo Research Centre.

My research focuses primarily on the cultural and political history of Britain and the nature of Britain's multiple overseas roles since 1815.  I am currently writing a monograph on the British community in inter-war Egypt and the experience of decolonisation.  My earlier work has examined the evolution of urban government in the nineteenth century, the management of political ethics and the history of British Liberalism. I am also interested in the British art world and have published on the history of Impressionism, British art education, and the development of British art museums in the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

I am Director of the Cairo Research Centre and a staff member of the Centre for Urban History and the Centre for Victorian Studies.  

Books 

• A Century of State-Making in Iraq; Baghdad, Kurdistan, and the Development of the Constitution [edited with M. Charountaki and L. Anderson] (Springer 2025).
• High Culture and Tall Chimneys (Manchester University Press, 2018).
• Reinventing History [edited with I. Macgregor Morris and A. Bayliss], (University of London, 2009).
• Corruption in Urban Politics and Society 1780-1950 [edited with J. Butland-Smith], (Ashgate, Historical Urban Studies, 2007).
• The Transformation of Urban Liberalism: Party Politics and Urban Governance 1885-1895 (Ashgate, Historical Urban Studies, 2006). 

Articles - Select/Recent

• 'Parish councils, political inclusion, Liberal politics and the question of class: the 1894 elections as a forgotten phase in British democratization' Historical Research (2022).
• 'Lancashire's Pioneering Impressionists: The Manchester School of Painters and its Critics, 1868-1914', Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (2022). 
• 'The 'last railway mania': The Light Railways Act of 1896 and local railway construction in Britain', The Journal of Transport History (2019)
• 'Corruption and the Ethical Standards of British Public Life': National Debates and Local Administration, 1880-1914, in R. Kroeze, A, Vitoria and G. Geltner, Anticorruption in History, (Oxford, 2018).
• 'The Alexandria You Are Losing'? Urban Heritage and Activism in Egypt since the 2011 Revolution, in Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies (2017).
• 'British Conservativism and the Classical Tradition', Mneme. Quaderni dei corsi di Beni Culturali e Archeologia (2017).
• 'Civic Reputations and the Management of Corruption in British Cities' in Jens Engels, Andreas Fahrmeir, Cesare Mattini and Frederick Monier, Stadt - Mach - Korruption (Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 2017).
• 'Making Cairo Modern: Governance, Urban Space and the Development of Suburbia, c. 1880-1922', Urban History (2013).
• 'Between Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism: The Strange Death of Liberal Alexandria, 1882-1952', Journal of Urban History (2012).

Victorian History

Victorian Art

History of political parties and political movements

History of political ideas

History of modern Egypt

History of the British Empire

The influence of the classical tradition

I am Director of Studies for the MA in Urban Conservation.  This can be studied on campus or via distance learning. 

I organise the School of History, Politics and International Relations' two heritage placement modules, in which undergraduate and postgraduate students have the opportunity to work in local museums, archives, historic houses, heritage railways and other sites of historical interest.  I welcome student enquiries about the opportunities available in the coming academic year.

I supervise postgraduate students from across the School on the history and politics of Britain, the British Empire, and the Middle East.

Victorian History

Victorian Art

History of political parties and political movements

History of political ideas

History of modern Egypt

History of the British Empire

The influence of the classical tradition

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society