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About me

I am a second year History Student at Queen’s from a small seaside town in Suffolk. When picking my degree, the biggest priority was choosing a subject I loved and have a real curiosity for investigating further. The course at Queen’s was everything I was looking for. It offered a great range of modules to pick from, covered the topics and periods of history that interested me, and allowed me to focus on sources that really have peaked my interest, namely art and fashion. Being able to experience all this choice whilst being taught in small group environments by experts in the field meant it was the perfect place to apply to.

College experience

I love the close-knit nature of Queen’s and the fact it’s community! The college system made starting uni much smoother and the settling in process a lot easier as all Queen’s members live in provided accommodation and on site in the first year so you rarely go a day without seeing anyone.

Oxford life

Anyone who knows me, knows I am not a morning person… The nature of my degree means the majority of my work is independently led with around 2-5 contact hours with tutors a week discussing my week’s research. As a result, scheduling my time and creating a routine that works for me is a priority. I tend to start my working day at around 10am. Living out this year means I have a short relaxing walk into Queen’s to get a few hours of work in before college lunch.

My favourite place to work is the Queen’s new library. Its silent working environment and popularity with students means I can gain focus on the task in hand quicker than if I were to be in my room. After lunch, I often find friends to work with for the afternoon. I try to get the bulk of my reading, writing, or re-watching lectures done during this block of time. The afternoon is often broken up by a must-have coffee break! I then like to cook with friends in the Cardo kitchen in the evening (my favourite thing about living out this year) and attend any social events I may have – such as QCBC rowing, the Oxford fashion Society, or formal dinners.

Advice for applicants

Apply for a subject you have a real interest in. University is so independently driven so having something you are passionate about helps to drive motivation.

About me

Hey! I’m Heather and I am a first year reading History at Queen’s. I am from Stockport in Manchester, where I studied my A-Levels at a Catholic state college. I chose to study history at Queen’s because of how interdisciplinary the subject is: it has been described by one of my tutors as essentially ‘the humanities course’, as you get to do a bit of everything. Oxford has a wide range of geographic, periodic, and thematic approaches to history which means you can study whatever interests you most.

College experience

My favourite thing(s) about Queens are the people! The college has a very friendly and inclusive environment, with a wide-ranging welfare system.

Life at Oxford

My typical day may start with a lecture on my current paper, the History of the British Isles between 300-1100. I will then spend a few hours in our 24/7 New Library working on my essay, which I will intersperse with meals in our catered hall, or a trip to a cafe with a friend. On Wednesday evenings I will go to Star Wars society, where I have recently become social secretary on the committee, and on Thursday evenings I will go to Dr Who society to unwind and watch an episode with some friends (and snacks).

Advice for applicants

Read! Read around your subject, you will feel more comfortable having conversations with tutors about concepts in the field, and it will be useful to put in your personal statement. For history students, have a read on some works on historiography, something you may not have come across during your A-levels, as it really gets you thinking about the discipline and how it functions.

Introduction

I grew up in Virginia and took my BA with Distinction in History from Swarthmore College, and my MA and PhD from Yale University. After teaching at Wellesley College and Temple University, I moved to the University of Virginia where I am currently the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History. 

Teaching

My teaching focuses on the political, cultural, and gender history of the 19th-century United States.  At Oxford, I will participate in the DPhil workshop, co-teach the Master’s course, supervise Master’s students, and offer lectures in US History.

Research

My research specialty is the Civil War era and 19th-century South, with a focus on political dissent and discourse, and on the intersections of political, military, and social history.  My most recent book, Armies of Deliverance:  A New History of the Civil War, won the 2020 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and was named one of the Wall Street Journal‘s best books of 2019.  My new book, Longstreet:  The Confederate General Who Defied the South, is forthcoming this November with Simon & Schuster, and my current research project is a biography of humanitarian Clara Barton, under contract with Simon & Schuster.  

Publications

Armies of Deliverance:  A New History of the Civil War.  Oxford University Press, 2019. 

Appomattox:  Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War. Oxford University Press, 2013. 

Disunion!   The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789-1859.  University of North Carolina Press, 2008. 

Southern Lady, Yankee Spy:  The True Story of Elizabeth Van, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy.  Oxford University Press, 2005.  

Introduction

I went to school in Colombo, Sri Lanka and then read for my undergraduate and master’s degrees in history and international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to beginning my doctorate at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, I led the Politics Research practice at Verité Research, a think-tank based in Colombo. Following my doctorate, I founded Itihas, an organisation that advances history education reform in Sri Lanka. I was also a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Colombo. I took up my current academic post at Queen’s in October 2023. 

Research

My research interests are broadly in global and Sri Lankan history. My doctoral research re-opened a neglected chapter in Sri Lanka’s history. It critically re-examined the deeper roots of ethno-religious violence between Sinhalese and Moors and presented a historical narrative of cycles of intolerance and victimisation. I am embarking on a new project that focuses more broadly on shifting Islamic identities in Sri Lanka during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Publications

Some of my recent publications (excluding those under review) include:

‘Centring Conflict: Contemporary Sri Lanka in Perspective’, in Kanchana Ruwanpura, Amjad Mohamed-Saleem and Asha Abeyasekera (eds.) Handbook on Contemporary Sri Lanka (Routledge, forthcoming 2023)

‘Orthodoxy and Order: The Denial of Religious Liberty to Ahmadis in Colonial Ceylon’, Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities Vol. 43, Nos. 1 and 2 (July 2022), co-author with Gehan Gunatilleke

‘The Colonial History of Islamophobic Slurs in Sri Lanka’, (7 September 2020) History Workshop Online

‘A Brief History of Anti-Muslim Violence in Sri Lanka’, (22 July 2019), History Workshop Online

A wider selection of publications and interviews are accessible on my personal page www.itihas.lk

Introduction

I am a historian of early modern Europe at the University of Oxford currently finishing my DPhil. Before embarking on doctoral research, I completed an MSt in Early Modern History at Oxford and my undergraduate studies at the University of Bristol.

Teaching

I teach undergraduate students British and European History 1500-1700, historiography and historical methods, and the history of political thought. I also teach master’s students on the strands for Intellectual History and Early Modern History.

Research

My research focuses primarily on the cultural and intellectual history of sixteenth and seventeenth century France. I explore the ways in which people understood the idea of ‘judgement’ and how this shaped different forms of writing in the early modern period such as natural philosophy, history, poetry and essays. More broadly, I am interested in how new ways of describing thought emerged in the context of the intellectual transformation of the Renaissance and the religious upheaval of the Reformation.

Course

  • BA Ancient and Modern History
  • BA HistoryBA History and English
  • BA History and Modern Languages
  • BA History and Politics

Admissions

We normally admit 10 students per year for History and the History joint school courses. Within this quota, applicants are selected on merit: there is no fixed ratio of main school to joint school admissions and no ‘sub-quota’ for joint schools.

The courses

All History courses last for three years, though those studying History and Modern Languages will normally spend an additional year abroad, between their second and final years. There are few restrictions upon the choice of papers within the History courses, and no restrictions at all after students’ first year: those papers which cannot be taught in Queen’s are taught by arrangement in other colleges. Full details of the History and joint school courses can be found on the History Faculty website.

Teaching

Students in all courses except History and Modern Languages take four papers for the Preliminary Examination at the end of the first year, and a further seven for their Final Honours Schools. The range of options available within the History syllabus is immensely wide and diverse, and students are encouraged to be adventurous, rather than sticking to areas familiar from school. The University’s ‘rules’ indeed require students in the main History school to choose an outline paper from each of three period blocs – medieval, early modern and modern – and to choose at least two European and one World history paper during their degree.

These requirements are necessarily relaxed in the joint schools, where students take fewer History papers, but the range of options available to joint school students is just as broad, and the study of two distinct but related disciplines offers fresh challenges and opportunities:

Ancient and Modern History offers the opportunity to study the ancient world alongside the medieval and modern in a broad, thematic perspective that encourages critical and creative historical understanding. Knowledge of classical languages is not expected in advance, but can be acquired or strengthened during the course.

The History and English degree offers a very productive way of thinking about the creation and use of texts (whether ‘literary’ or not) in a variety of historical contexts. While many of the English papers are period-based and will therefore overlap very directly with parts of the History course, others, particularly in the final year, allow you to compare themes and genres across periods.  Two interdisciplinary papers taught jointly by members of the English and History Faculties enable History and English students to draw together their interests and skills from both sides of the degree.

The History and Modern Languages degree allows you to combine the study of History with a foreign language and literature, which puts you in a good position to make use of source texts and documents not available to others. The one formal way in which the two strands of the course are joined is in the ‘bridge essay’, a compulsory element which encourages you to think about the relations between history and literature. Otherwise, you can either focus on the history of the countries whose language you are studying and align your periods of history with periods of literature, or study the two sides of the course more independently.

History and Politics students can set the study of political science in the context of the historical development of states and societies. Whilst the two subjects naturally overlap most extensively in the modern period, there is no assumption of a modern bias on the History side of the course, and the same range of period papers is available to History and Politics students as to those studying the main History school. A historical approach can enhance the study and understanding of present-day political systems, while an understanding of the theories and techniques of political science can help structure historical analysis.

Each of the courses available offers opportunities for independent assessed study, and in History, Ancient and Modern History, History and Politics and History and English students submit a thesis based on original research on a topic of their own choosing (in History and Modern Languages this provision is optional).

Interviews

All candidates who pass the History Aptitude Test are normally called for interview. Those applying for the main school may have two interviews in History. During the interview, candidates are asked questions about their submitted written work. They may also be asked questions about a sample historical document, source or piece of historical writing which they have been given to examine shortly before or in the context of the interview. Similar arrangements apply in Ancient and Modern History. Candidates for History and English, History and Modern Languages and History and Politics will have only one interview in History, and another in their other subject, following broadly the forms specified in the pages for English, Modern Languages and Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Candidates for History courses have normally studied the subject at school. We therefore look for evidence of an ability to handle historical evidence and to deploy the skills of historical analysis. But we are more concerned to identify the potential for future development. An ability to deal with unfamiliar material, or with unfamiliar approaches to familiar material, is more likely to impress us than a simple encyclopaedic knowledge of your subject.


Introduction

I started my undergraduate degree in history, with a double minor in Caribbean Studies and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Toronto but left after a year to work in community organising and education. Following a six-year hiatus from university, which included traveling and working for several years in Japan, I completed my undergraduate degree and immediately pursued a master’s in history at the University of Victoria, BC.  I was awarded the Social Science and Humanities Research Council Scholarship (SSHRC) to pursue a PhD, which I did at the University of Warwick. My dissertation focused on discourses and practices of sexual-economic exchange in Jamaica and Britain from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century.  Following my PhD, I worked for a year as an Education and Outreach Officer at the Modern Records Office in Coventry before taking up a permanent position in 2016 as Senior Teaching Fellow and Director of Student Experience in the History Department at the University of Warwick.  In October 2021 I took up the position of Associate Professor and Brittenden Fellow in Black British History at the Queen’s College.

Teaching

I teach modern British history to undergraduates in all years at Queen’s. I teach the History of British Isles papers, Approaches to History, and the option papers ‘Body and Emotions’. I am happy to supervise graduate work in a broad range of areas related to histories of race, gender and sexuality in Britain and the Anglo-Caribbean from the late eighteenth to early twentieth century.

Research

I am a social-cultural historian of race and gender, with a focus on Black women’s histories in Britain and the Anglo-Caribbean. I am interested in the everyday ways people oppressed within society negotiate and navigate structures of power and inequality, as well as the legacies and politics of writing such histories within contemporary society.

My current research focuses on the life of an Afro-Jamaican woman in late eighteenth-century Jamaica and Britain and the archival remnants of her life. I am also currently developing a community-engaged project which looks at the history of Black mothering in Britain and the use of creative storytelling. Both projects draw upon my interest in community-engaged and Caribbean research methodologies.

Introduction

I did my undergraduate degree in History and English at Cork in Ireland (where I was born and raised), before coming to Oxford for graduate work. I completed my doctorate on the image of the Jewish temple in the writings of the Anglo-Saxon monk Bede at Queen’s; the subsequent book from this work won the 2017 Best Book Prize from the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists. After Oxford, I held research fellowships at Churchill College, Cambridge, and the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Durham, as well as teaching positions at Sheffield and King’s College London. I took up my current post at Queen’s in 2020. 

Teaching

I teach early medieval history, both that of the British Isles and Europe more generally, occasionally venturing into the High Middle Ages. I also contribute to the teaching of historical methods, theories and approaches at both an undergraduate level, in College, and a postgraduate level, at the History Faculty.

Research

I am writing a book on The Rise of Christian Kingship, 400-850 (under contract with OUP), part of a wider project exploring the possibility of a religion/ secular distinction in the early Middle Ages. While pre-modern people are usually thought not to have distinguished religion from the secular, my work seeks to show how what I call ‘secularizing strategies’ were deployed in early medieval contexts. 

A second strand in my research investigates issues of community and identity in the early medieval world, particularly the importance of the idea of the Church. So far, my publications have focused on the interplay of religious and ethnic identities, but I intend to explore the importance of group identity in the Insular Easter Controversy in the future.

Publications

For a list of my publications, see my Academia page. 

Contact

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