EDUCATION AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT 

Employment History

Sheffield Hallam University: Professor of Social and Cultural History, Mar 2019-present; Head of History, Sept 2019-August 2023; Reader in History, June 2015-Mar 2019; Principal Lecturer in History, Sept 2006-June 2015 (History Programme Leader, 2011-2015; LTA Lead in Humanities, 2006-2011); Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer in History, Aug 1998-Sept 2006.

University of Nottingham: Lecturer in History, Oct 1996-Aug 1998.

SHU, University of York, Northern College: Associate Lecturer, Sept 1993-Oct 1996.

University of Humberside: Lecturer in History (0.5), Sept 1992-Sept 1993.

Development Education Centre (South Yorkshire): History Project Worker, ‘The Empire in South Yorkshire’, Aug 1989-Aug 1992.

Higher Education and Qualifications

MA Creative Writing, Sheffield Hallam University (Distinction), 2011-2015 (p/t).

PhD in History, University of York. Thesis title: 'The "heathen" at home and overseas: the middle class and the civilising mission, 1790-1843', 1993-1997.

MA History, Sheffield Hallam University (Distinction), 1992-1993 (p/t).

PGCE (Secondary History and RE), University of Sussex, 1988-1989.

BA (Hons) History (with African and Asian Studies), University of Sussex (First class), 1985-1988. Prizes: 1988 Rose Prize for best performance on the History degree, and the Gladstone Memorial Prize for an essay on the module Labour Movements.

Esteem/ Professional Standing (national/international)

Editorial Board, History of People and Place, formerly International Journal of Regional and Local History (2022-ongoing)

European Board of History SoTL (elected member, 2019)

Visiting Fellow, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia (2018)

HEA National Teaching Fellow (2015)

Invited member of the team to review/rewrite the History Benchmark Statement (2013-14)

Senior Fellow of the HEA (2013)

Elected UK/Ireland Regional Director for History SoTL (2013-2016)

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (accepted 2012) 

Invited member of the HEA History Forum (2011-2014) and History Subject Centre Advisory Panel (2008-2011)

Reviewer (books and journal submissions) for a range of journals, including Women’s History Review, Gender & History, Journal of British Studies, and book proposals/book manuscripts (e.g. for Bloomsbury, White Rose Press, MUP)

Editorial Team, Women’s History Review (2004-2011)

External Examiner: chief external, postgraduate and undergraduate

External Examiner for PhD theses: University of West Virginia (2020); the Australian National University (2018), University of Huddersfield (2017), La Trobe University (2016), University of Leicester (2013) and Edith Cowan University (2012).

RESEARCH and ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

My academic research focuses on three main fields: (i) local and global histories/the history of empire/heritage and commemoration; (ii) gender and sexuality; and (iii) public, community, school and creative histories in relation to the above. I have also published in the field of pedagogical research/scholarship of teaching and learning. 

a) Books _______________________________________________________

 A Place of Dreams: Desire, deception and a wartime coming-of-age (Open Book Publishers, 2025, forthcoming). https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0461

Women in Transnational History: Gendering the Local and the Global (Routledge, 2016), pages: xii + 207. Edited collection, with Clare Midgley and Julie Carlier. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315626802  

The Civilising Mission and the English Middle Class: the 'heathen' at home and overseas 1792-1850 (Palgrave, 2009), pages: xiv + 353. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234727

British Women’s History, 1780-1914: A Documentary History from the Enlightenment to World War One (I.B. Tauris, 2007), pages: xii + 279. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755632145

b) Journal Articles (refereed) _______________________________________________________

'Undisciplined history: creative methods and academic practice', History Workshop Journal, History Workshop Journal, Vol. 96 (Autumn 2023), 153–175. Alison Twells (first named author), with Will Pooley, Matt Houlbrook and Helen Rogers. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbad012

‘“Eros the Great Leveller”: Edward Carpenter, Sexual Cosmotopianism and the Northern Working Man’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Vol. 22, No. 3 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1353/cch.2021.0052

'Sex, Gender and Romantic Intimacy in Servicemen's Letters during the Second World War', The Historical Journal, Vol. 63. No. 3 (2020), 732-753. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x19000311

'"It's about giving yourself a sense of belonging": community-based history and well-being in South Yorkshire', People, Place and Policy, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2018), 8-28. With Penny Furness, Sadiq Bhanbhro and Maxine Gregory. https://doi.org/10.3351/ppp.2018.6282399829

'Iron Dukes and Naked Races: Edward Carpenter's Sheffield and LGBTQ public history', International Journal of Local and Regional History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2018), 47-67. https://doi.org/10.1080/20514530.2018.1451446

‘“Went into raptures”: reading emotion in the ordinary wartime diary, 1941-1946’, Women’s History Review, special edition on Love, Desire and Melancholy inspired by Constance Maynard, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2015), 143-160. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2015.1047250

“An Africa of Religious Life": Fredrika Bremer’s American Faith Journey, 1849-1851’, Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2013), 158-181. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2013.0010

 ‘“The innate yearnings of our souls”: subjectivity, religiosity and outward testimony in Mary Howitt’s Autobiography (1889)’, Journal of Victorian Culture, Vol. 17. No. 3 (2012), 309-328. https://doi.org/10.1080/13555502.2012.697742

‘Missionary Domesticity and Woman’s Sphere in early nineteenth-century England’, Gender & History, Vol. 18, No. 2 (2006), 266-284. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0424.2006.00429.x

‘“Happy English Children”: class, ethnicity and the making of missionary women, 1800-1850’, Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1998), 235-245. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0277-5395(98)00021-1

‘“A state of infancy”: British missionaries and West Africa in the 1820s and 1830s’, Wasafiri: Journal of Caribbean, African, Asian and Associated Literature and Film, Vol. 11, No. 23 (1996), 19-24. https://doi.org/10.1080/02690059608589478

‘“So distant and wild a scene”: domesticity and difference in Hannah Kilham’s writing from West Africa, 1822-1832’, Women’s History Review Vol. 4, No. 3 (1995), 301-318. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612029500200162

 c) Book Chapters (invited) _______________________________________________________

‘“Went into raptures”: reading emotion in the ordinary wartime diary, 1941-1946’, Angharad Eyre, Jane Mackelworth, Elsa Richardson (eds), Love, Desire and Melancholy: inspired by Constance Maynard 1849-1935 (Routledge, book issue of essays in Women’s History Review, 2017, see above). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315226347-9

‘Women at the intersection of the local and the global in school and community history in Britain since the 1980s’, in Clare Midgley, Alison Twells and Julie Carlier (eds), Women in Transnational History: Gendering the Local and the Global (Routledge, 2016), 180-200. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315626802-10

‘Introduction’, with Clare Midgley, Alison Twells and Julie Carlier (eds), Women in Transnational History: Gendering the Local and the Global (Routledge, 2016), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315626802-1

‘“We ought to obey God rather than Man”: Women, Anti-slavery and Nonconformist Religious Cultures, 1800-1840’, Elizabeth Clapp and Julie Roy Jeffrey (eds), Women, Dissent and Anti-Slavery in Britain and America, 1790-1865 (Oxford University Press, 2011), 66-87. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199585489.003.0004

‘Missionary Fathers and Wayward Sons in the South Pacific, 1796-1827’, Helen Rogers and Trev Lynn Broughton (eds), Fatherhood in Britain 1780-1914 (Palgrave, 2007), 153-164. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-20785-1_11

‘A Christian and civilised land: the British middle class and the civilising mission, 1820-1842’, Alan Kidd and David Nicholls (eds), Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Aspects of the History of the Middle Class in Britain, 1780-1945 (Manchester University Press, 1999), 47-64. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230234727_7

‘Colonial discourse and domestic femininity: the British and Irish Ladies’ Society, 1822-29’, Máire ní Fhlathúin (ed.), The Legacy of Colonialism: Gender and Cultural Identity in Postcolonial Societies (Galway University Press, 1998), 147-156.

‘“Let us begin well at home”: class, race and Christian motherhood in the writing of Hannah Kilham, 1774-1832’, Eileen Janes Yeo (ed.), Radical Femininity: Women’s Self-Representation in the Public Sphere, 1800-1914 (Manchester University Press, 1998), 25-51.  

d) Scholarship of Teaching and Learning _______________________________________________________

'Teaching Sex and Gender in the Age of #MeToo', blog post, Social History Teaching Exchange, March 2019: http://socialhistory.org.uk/shs_exchange/teaching-sex-and-gender.

‘Students as partners in public history and community engagement’, in Alan Booth and David Ludvigsson (eds), Enriching History Teaching and Learning: Challenges, Possibilities, Practice (Linköping University, 2015). ISBN: 978-91-7519-131-7.

Teaching Work-Related Learning in History (University of Warwick: History at the Higher Education Academy, 2011), 39 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9566883-8-5. With June Balshaw. 

‘Employability in the History Curriculum’, Lisa Lavender (ed,) History Graduates with Impact (University of Warwick: History at the Higher Education Academy, 2011), 43-44. ISBN: 978-0-9566883-6-1.

e) Web articles__________________________________________________

‘Colonialism, Slavery and the Industrial Revolution: The Empire in South Yorkshire: Reflections in the context of BLM’, with Rob Unwin. Birmingham DEC, Elephant Times 3, January 2021. 

'Teaching Sex and Gender in the Age of #MeToo', blog post, Social History Teaching Exchange, March 2019: http://socialhistory.org.uk/shs_exchange/teaching-sex-and-gender. 

‘Mary-Anne Rawson (1801-1887)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2018).  https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-112194 

Storying the Past, various contributions, 2015-ongoing  https://storyingthepast.wordpress.com 

Socks for the Boys, www.norahsdiaries.wordpress.com, 2013-2015 

‘Community History’, Making History: The Changing Face of the Profession in Britain, Institute of Historical Research, 2008. Web Address: http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/articles/community_history.html