Dr David Hitchcock

I am a historian of poverty and homelessness in England, and currently the Course Director of the History Subject Suite. My teaching focuses on the broad social and cultural contours of early modern Europe, on Atlantic colonialism, and on social problems in England c.1600-1800. My research looks at vagrancy and poverty in early modern England, and in the British Atlantic world. I am presently in the early stages of a new book project: tentatively called 'The Ends of Poverty, c. 1600-1800' and intend to cover material ranging from utopian imaginings to colonial displacement, and architectural and environmental design.

My role at CCCU encompasses teaching, research, leadership, and administration. I am also proud to supervise several doctoral candidates and to teach at MA level. I am a Senior Lecturer in History. I have previously administered to the British Studies exchange study programme, directed the taught MA MEMS programme, and served as School Director of Recruitment. I am presently the Course Director for the History BA.

I previously worked and studied at the University of Warwick, and completed a PhD and post-doctoral fellowship at there in 2013. I have taught at CCCU for 9 years.

My research looks at vagrancy and poverty in early modern England, and in the British Atlantic world. I am presently in the early stages of a new book project: tentatively called 'The Ends of Poverty, c. 1600-1800' and intend to cover material ranging from utopian imaginings to colonial displacement, and architectural and environmental design.

My research interests lie in histories of poverty, colonialism, inequality, the putative 'origins' of capitalism, and cultural representation, broadly across the early modern period c.1550 to 1800 in my case.

My publications in print are:
1. ‘Rogues, Devilry and Strange Wonders’: Re-presenting early modernity in Neil Gaiman’s Marvel 1602’, in Michael Goodrum, David Hall, and Philip Smith (eds), Drawing the Past: Comics and the Historical Imagination (University of Mississippi Press, 2022). (9,000 words)
2. With Julia McClure, (eds), The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450-1800 (London: Routledge, 2021). (225,000 words)
a. With Julia McClure, ‘Introduction: The Poor in History’ in David Hitchcock and Julia McClure (eds), The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450-1800 (10,000 words)
b. ‘Vagrancy and Homelessness’ in David Hitchcock and Julia McClure (eds), The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450-1800 (11,000 words)
3. ‘Punishment is all the charity that the law affordeth them’: Penal Transportation, Vagrancy, and the Charitable Impulse in the British Atlantic, 1618-1718’, New Global Studies, 12:2, Special Issue: ‘Empires of Charity’ (2018); 195-215. https://doi.org/10.1515/ngs-2018-0029 (9000 words)
4. ‘He is the Vagabond That Hath No Habitation in the Lord’: The Representation of Quakerism as Vagrancy in Interregnum England, c. 1650-1660’, Cultural and Social History, 15:1 (2018); 21-37. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2018.1427340 (11,000 words)
5. Vagrancy in English Culture and Society, 1650-1750 (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). (110,000 words)
6. ‘Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic’, in Trevor Burnard (ed), Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Online: www.oxfordbibliographies.com (7,000 words)
7. ‘Poverty and Mobility in England, 1600-1850’, a Rural History Special Issue, 24:1 (2013); 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793312000180 (4,000 words)
8. ‘A Typology of Travellers: Migration, Justice, and Vagrancy in Warwickshire, 1670-1730’, Rural History, 23:1 (2012); 21-39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956793311000136 (11,000 words)

I am a committee member of the Social History Society executive. I am External Examiner for the History programme at the University of Hertfordshire. I was for some years the 'annual periodicals reviewer' for early modern material for the Economic History Review.