Postgraduate research in History
History at the University of Exeter brings together a lively and dynamic group that boasts some of the leading academic historians in the country. Our staff provide postgraduates with a considerable breadth of experience and research expertise across the full range of the discipline, from post-Roman Europe to the contemporary world, covering both European and extra-European history.
We are among the upper ranks of History departments in the UK in terms of the quality and intensity of our research. Research is integral to all our activity. All members of staff are research active and research and publish at the highest level. Staff in the department research political, economic, social, cultural, religious, medical, environmental, maritime, naval, military and diplomatic history. We range in time from the early medieval period to the late 20th century. We have particular strengths in the history of Britain and continental Europe, but also focus on the history of the United States, Africa, and India. A number of research centres are linked with the work of the Department and organise seminar series with regular meetings through the academic year which are an important meeting place for postgraduate students to hear, discuss and present research.
Explore our research centres and research projects to find out more about our current research topics.
Visit our History staff profiles pages for details on individual staff research interests and publications.
Our current PGRs
In History at Exeter we're proud of the research carried out by our PhD students. There are currently around 80 PhD students in the Department, many of whom maintain an online personal profile detailing their research activities. Follow the links below to find out more about them and their research projects.
| Student | Research title | Lead supervisor |
|---|---|---|
| Deema Alhodaif | The Status of Bahrain between 1880-1907 and its Relationships with the British Empire: A Protectorate or Not? | Professor Richard Toye |
| Matthew Beebee | Deindustrialisation, place and belonging in England since 1960 | Professor Jon Lawrence |
| Lisa Berry-Waite | The parliamentary election campaigns of women candidates in Britain, 1918-1931 | Professor David Thackeray |
| Andrew Binding | Living at Home: People, Spaces, and the Changing Domestic Environment in the Early Modern South West England. | Professor Jane Whittle |
| Jamie Bryson | The Russian Empire and Internal Security in the First World War | Dr Matt Rendle |
| Laura Burnett | ‘For Change and Charitie’: How were seventeenth century trade tokens used and understood by contemporaries? | Professor Henry French |
| Wendy Clarke | Pilton and Barnstaple Priories: The Landscape Context, Life Course and Social Interactions of Two Small Dependencies | Professor James Clark |
| John Clews | Private Patients in Pauper Palaces: Fee-paying Patients in English County and Borough Asylums, 1880-1910 | Professor Mark Jackson |
| Rowena Cockett | The experience, value, and expression of emotions in thirteenth-century Iberia | Professor Catherine Rider |
| Holly Conway | Edward I’s castles of Wales: The experience, perception and impact of the medieval on the late Victorian and Edwardian populous of Britain. | Dr Martha Vandrei |
| Richard Cooke | Devon's economic development in the long fifteenth century | Professor Jane Whittle |
| Gavin Davies | Board Games, Britain, and the World, c. 1759-1860 | Professor Paul Young |
| Anthony Delaney | Cotqueans: Queer Domesticity in eighteenth-century England | Professor Helen Berry |
| Gijs Drejier | Maritime average and normative practice in the Southern Low Countries (Fifteenth-Sixteenth Centuries) | Professor Maria Fusaro |
| Barbara Dunn | ‘Astrology is higher and nobler than medicine and every physician must be an astrologer’: Practitioners, Practices and the 'Prognostical part of Physick' c. 1580-1700 | Professor Jonathan Barry |
| Jake Dyble | Transferring Costs in the Maritime Economy: Maritime Averages in Livorno (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries) | Professor Maria Fusaro |
| Rhoda Evans | Investigating Disorder in Malta: Policing in a British Colony | Professor Martin Thomas |
| Thomas Fidler | Cornwall's Border – Celtic Frontier or Anglicised Territory? | Dr Garry Tregidga |
| Lydia Fisher | Visualising Faith: Stained Glass Windows, Belief and the Parish in the English Church 1400-1600 | Professor James Clark |
| Gearóid Fitzgerald | A Unique Vision?: How was Gregory’s vision of authority and leadership novel? | Professor Sarah Hamilton |
| Helen Frost | The Representation of the Strategic Bombing Campaign against Germany in the Allied (both national and international) Media and the Interpretation and Reception of that Representation by the General Public, 1939-1945. | Professor Richard Overy |
| Samuel Gillis Hogan | Familiar with Fairies: A Study of Late Medieval and Early Modern Fairy Conjuring Texts | Professor Catherine Rider |
| Yawei Han | The ideas of Sidney & Beatrice Webb, their relationship of welfare state policy, and the development of the relevant policies. | Dr Marc Palen |
| Yuhei Hasegawa | A political and intellectual biography of Leopold Amery | Professor Richard Toye |
| Linda Henderson | “Looking after the Babes” – Class, Gender, and the Nature of Scientific Improvement – a case study of the Aylesbury Duck Industry 1820-1920. | Professor Henry French |
| Joshua Hockley-Still | Euroscepticism in the Labour Party: The Role Played By The Labour Common Market Safeguards Committee From 1975 | Professor Richard Toye |
| Jonathan Hutchinson | A Prosopography of Glastonbury Monks from the Twelfth Century to the Dissolution | Professor James Clark |
| Antonio Iodice | Average - Transaction Costs and Risk Management during the First Globalization (Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries) "Average and seaborne trade in early modern Genoa, 1590-1700" | Professor Maria Fusaro |
| Daniel Jewson | From the Mad House to the Mental Hospital: Institutional Subcultures in the remaking of psychiatry, 1900-39 | Dr Ana Antic |
| Li Jiang | Wage Labour in Gentry Households of Early Modern England | Professor Jane Whittle |
| Kaitlin Emelie Johnson | By mere chance, the modus operandi for the use of foreign language in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century British Maritime History | Professor Maria Fusaro |
| Samantha Jones | Back from the Brink: Laying the Foundations of the Modern RNLI, 1850 – 1897. | Dr James Davey |
| Charlotte Kelsted | Intimate Colonialism: British Women and the Population of Mandate Palestine | Dr Stacey Hynd |
| Polly Lowe | Morality and the Market: Contested Commodification in Eighteenth-Century England | Professor Sarah Toulalan |
| Jesse Lynch | The Coming of Paper: The Transformative Effect of Paper Diffusion in Late-Medieval England | Professor James Clark |
| Maria-Teresa Marangoni | The Shape of Disease: Do Changing Contexts Produce Shifting Perceptions of Disease? The Case of Measles in Italy. [part of PhD project for which I had applied to: How Italy Became a Leader for the Global Health Security Agenda. Global Health Regimes and Local Health Governance: An Historical-Anthropological Study of an Intricate Web of Relations] | Dr Dora Vargha |
| Eleanor March | Tewkesbury Abbey: an interdisciplinary study of the church and its material culture from its medieval origins | Professor James Clark |
| Judith Mawer | Mysticism, Alchemy, and the Eirenic Impulse: how the Welsh theosopher, Thomas Vaughan (1621-1666), responded to the political, religious, and intellectual upheavals of mid seventeenth-century Britain | Professor Jonathan Barry |
| David Mottishaw | From Factory to Frontline: A Social and Cultural History of British Tanks during the Second World War | Professor Richard Toye |
| Robert Nantes | Bankruptcy in eighteenth century England: A social account. | Professor Jonathan Barry |
| Martin Newman | British Politicians and the Aircraft Industry 1964 - 1979 | Professor Richard Toye |
| Alison Norton | A Castle's Role: An interdisciplinary study of how castles individually expressed socio-cultural ideologies in England’s medieval south-west | Professor Sarah Hamilton |
| William Patrick | The Office of Prime Minister under Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald | Professor Richard Toye |
| Daniel Phillips | The proximity of purpose in Colonial Zoological Gardens: An entangled history of Empire and the Establishment of The Calcutta Zoological Gardens, 1867-1908 | Dr Gajendra Singh |
| Iona Ramsay | Martyrs and Memory: The Politics of Memorialising Anti-Communist Spiritual ‘Resistance’ in Romania | Professor James Mark |
| Jack William Anthony Reeves | The Freedom Bus: A Palestinian Activist Narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (or Dynamic). | Dr Emily Bridger |
| Matthew Richardson | A fourth branch of government: U.S. Government and Press Relations during the Lucky Dragon incident, Cuban Missile Crisis ad Chernobyl. | Dr Matthias Reiss |
| Jane Saul | Calculation and Compassion: Caring for the Poor in Eighteenth Century Battersea | Professor Henry French |
| Isabel Sawkins | Official Memorialisation of the Holocaust in Post-Soviet Russia. | Professor James Mark |
| Hannah Slajus | The Body as Medicine: Human Ingredients in Seventeenth Century Britain. | Professor Sarah Toulalan |
| Emil Sokolov | Addressing Immigration: A Study of Conservative and Labour Election Addresses and Immigration Issues 1960-80. | Professor Richard Toye |
| Harriet B F Winstanley C Tait | Lordship and Religion in Late-Medieval South-East England. | Professor James Clark |
| Joanna Thomas | Britain’s seafaring men and women: an analysis of the maritime labour force 1850 – 1911 | Professor Maria Fusaro |
| Balint Tolmar | The “Adria”-Project: East-South Relations and the European Socialist Countries' Quest for Energy Security in the Post-Oil Shock Era | Professor James Mark |
| Diana Valencia Duarte | The Food Question: The agrarian reforms and counter-reforms, and peasants’ food insecurity in Colombia, 1961-2013 | Dr Stacey Hynd |
| Jessica Vining | The Cistercians at Buckland Abbey | Professor James Clark |
| Camille Mai Lan Vo Van Qui | “The breaking in and training of horses in medieval Western Europe (11th- 15th centuries)” | Professor Oliver Creighton |
| Marlen Von Reith | The evolution of western political discourse on child soldiering since 1945: a comparative analysis of Britain and West Germany | Dr Stacey Hynd |
| Lewis Wade | Maritime Trade and State Regulation: Maritime Averages in France during the Seventeenth Century | Professor Maria Fusaro |
| Heather Walker | Elite British Women travelling on the continent in the long eighteenth century, 1783-1836. | Professor Henry French |
| Hannah West | 'Communities of piety: religious houses and the parish in late medieval Bridgwater. | Professor Sarah Hamilton |
| Sonia Wigh | The Body of Words: A Social History of Sex and the Body in Medieval India | Professor Sarah Toulalan |
| Paul Williams | The Trading Community of Exeter 1470-1570 | Professor Jane Whittle |
| Marsha Wubbels | A Healthy Interest: lay concerns with diet, exercise, and body weight in England, 1670-1830. | Professor Sarah Toulalan |
| Kazuki Yamada | A Genealogy of Later Life Sexuality: Sex and Time in Mid-Nineteenth to Late-Twentieth Century Science (c. 1850-1980) | Professor Kate Fisher |
| Dukhee Yun | Early-Modern British Infantry Combat: Its perception, Realities and the Question of ‘Modernity’ 1642-1745 | Dr Martin Robson |
| Student | Research title | Lead supervisor |
|---|---|---|
| Kensa Broadhurst | The status of the Cornish language in the years between the death of Dolly Pentreath in 1777 and Henry Jenner's publication of A Handbook of the Cornish Language in 1904. | Dr Garry Tregidga |
| Michael Bunney | The impact of World War 1 and 2 on coastal communities in South Cornwall. | Dr Garry Tregidga |
| Kenneth Clayton | What can the Wase papers held at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, add to the knowledge of education in seventeenth century England? | Professor Henry French |
| Andrew Climo | Onomastics (naming) in the Brittonic language of Early Cornwall (the period spanning pre-history to 1100CE). | Dr Garry Tregidga |
| Freya-Louise Evans | Postmodern Fairy Tales: A Study of the Influences of Welsh and Cornish Celtic folk tales on Contemporary Storytelling | Dr Garry Tregidga |
| Thomas Fidler | Cornwall's border: Celtic frontier or Anglicised territory? | Dr Garry Tregidga |
| Christopher Freeman | Beaming the British empire: the Imperial Wireless Chain, circa 1900-1940 | Professor Richard Noakes |
| Megan Furr | Telegraphic Work and Spaces in Britain, 1850-1950 | Professor Richard Noakes |
| Lucy Hilliar | A Rising in the West: The Development of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Western Esoteric Tradition | Professor Richard Noakes |
| Donald Luxston | Forward Movement - Thomas Hooper and the Architecture of British Columbia Methodist Missions | Professor Bryony Onciul |
| Jason Mead | The Training of a Human Plant: Luther Burbank and American Society in the early 20th Century | Professor Kristofer Allerfeldt |
| Phillipa Mills | The last Cornish speakiers: their demographic identities, connestions, families, socio, economic and religious identities and connections. | Dr Garry Tregidga |
| Emelye Parker | OH BONDAGE UP YOURS: Punk, Women and Feminism in the UK 1976-1984 | Dr Garry Tregidga |
| Christopher Parsons | The Nassomonian and the Cornish Revival: what did James Dryden Hosken contribute to The Cornish School of Writing? | Dr Garry Tregidga |
| Jennifer Pina-Trengrove | Revival and relevance: The walled kitchen garden in 21st century public history | Dr Garry Tregidga |
| William Rees | "I Will Not Be Conquered": Popular Music and Indigenous Identities in North America | Professor Bryony Onciul |
| Amy Shakespeare | The Legacy of Material Culture Repatriation on Museum Practic | Professor Bryony Onciul |
| Paul Simmons | The role of footpaths in the 21stC within both a climate and ecological crisis and an emerging low carbon economy | Dr Joanie Willett |
| Rebecca J Stewart | Rioting in the Age of Emancipation: An Exploration into the Instigation and Outcomes of the 1866 Memphis Race Riots in Reconstruction Tennessee | Professor Kristofer Allerfeldt |
| Robert Milan Maxwell Grant Voykovic | BRITISH ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY MAGAZINES AND CONTEMPORARY HISTORIES OF THE GREAT WAR | Professor Catriona Pennell |
| Onomastics (naming) in the Brittonic language of Early Cornwall (the period spanning pre-history to 1100CE). |
Ex Historia is an online journal published by postgraduate history students at the University of Exeter.
Supervisors - all students have a primary and a secondary supervisor who provide regular, high quality advice, support and direction in their academic endeavours. You will work closely with your supervisors over three to four years (full time PhD) or six to seven (part-time PhD) to develop, investigate and write-up a project at the cutting edge of theological research.
Visit our staff profiles for more information about individual research interests or use the search box on the right of this page to find a supervisor.
Mentor - each student will also be assigned a mentor who will take on a pastoral role and mediate on any problems that arise during the period of study. Your mentor will keep in regular contact and will provide background stability and support.
View list of funding opportunities available to students on our research degree programmes in History.
We are committed to making your PhD a rewarding experience that will develop your skills and expertise. Undertaking a postgraduate degree with us also provides you with access to the wide range of support offered by our Career Zone. In addition, postgraduate research students can access our Postgraduate Researchers' Programme, which covers a range of topics to help you to succeed during your research degree and to act as a springboard for your research career.
Graduate destinations
Below are some examples of initial jobs undertaken by History postgraduates who studied with us in recent years.
Please note that due to data protection, the job titles and organisations are listed independently and do not necessarily correspond.
| Job titles | Organisations |
|---|---|
| Historian Researcher Lecturer Curriculum Area Manager Senior consultant developer Producer Teacher Research and Development Officer Historian writer |
Boydell and Brewer |