University of Oxford

Doctor of Philosophy in History, History

Associate Tutor and Lecturer (Faculty of History, University of Oxford) and Stipendiary Lecturer (Hertford College, University of Oxford)

Hertford, University of Oxford

About

My broad fields of interest are the political, cultural and social history of the Atlantic world, including Britain, with particular attention to developments in Spanish-speaking countries from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. 

My doctoral thesis (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford) delved into the subjects of war volunteering and the ethos and modus operandi of national liberators through the study of the experience of a hitherto unrecognised group of Britons who served as members of the Spanish forces in what the English-speaking world calls the ‘Peninsular War’, whereas Spaniards consider it their ‘Guerra de la Independencia’ (War of Independence). This research has resulted in a book to be published by Continuum-Bloomsbury: 'British Liberators in the Age of Napoleon: Fighting under the Spanish Flag in the Peninsular War' (London and New York, forthcoming, November 2012). 

I am currently an Associate Tutor and Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Oxford’s Faculty of History. My teaching responsibilities include being course leader of the only undergraduate module in Modern Spanish History, covering the period 1845 to 1931 (Anarchism in the Spanish world  and Juan Díaz del Moral´s 'Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas'). I am also research assistant to Prof. Laurence Brockliss (Magdalen College) in the project 'From Sail to Steam: Health, Medicine and the Victorian Navy'.  Previously, I assisted Dr. D’Maris Coffman, director of the Winton Centre for Financial History, University of Cambridge, in the project 'European State Finance Database' and I contributed to the project 'Re-imagining Democracy in Europe and the Americas from 1750 to 1860', a joint initiative of the Department of Politics and International Relations and the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. This project is building up a network of people interested in discussing and exploring the processes whereby ‘democracy’ - in 1750 a marginal and denigrated concept - was reworked so as to be understood by the middle of the nineteenth century as a key force in the modern world.

I'm a former Reuters fellow with a long career in journalism (my dissertation examined the role of the media in the Northern Ireland conflict during the period 1960-1990), an Oxford graduate in Modern History (St. Hilda’s, 2006), co-editor of the Journal of the Oxford University History Society and an associate fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA).