I work in the Department of History and American Studies in the School of Humanities. Since childhood I have been interested in the past and in ways that the past ‘speaks’ to us through history, imagination and myth. I started my first degree at the University of Sussex in English Literature and but after a year my love of history won out and I changed subject; nevertheless, I think I’ve always approached History from the perspective of an student of English, as a complex text or narrative with characters and plots and poetry. I’ve spent many years trying to understand how and why History is written in the way it is, by different people and at different times, the ‘uses’ and significance of History within our cultures. ‘Why and how does it matter so much to us?’ these are my recurring questions. My PhD (undertaken at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham) was an early expression of these approaches and tried to make sense of the roots and underlying politics of ‘People’s History’, in particular the History Workshop Movement, an influential movement within British historiography. I have always wanted to be involved in communities and in our collective sense of history and to work with and learn from the many people who are experts in the past but aren’t professional historians. After my MA I spent four years teaching social history in Adult Education and for the WEA in London and Kent. Nowadays, I still work with a wide range of community groups, archaeologists, teachers, curators and others to deliver research and heritage projects. My research and teaching, draws on this experience and lies in the areas of heritage, historiography, public history and regeneration; antiquarianism, local history, historical fiction, art, film journalism and travel writing.
