pathway: Economics and Social History Alumni

My research will be investigating the notion of agricultural scientific improvement and progression, and how this is perceived and defined by gender and class.

The Aylesbury Duck Industry will be used as a case study to explore these ideas in depth.

The MRes dissertation will focus on the social and economic networks of the Aylesbury Duck Industry in the 19th Century. This will involve exploring the trade connections between Buckinghamshire where the ducks were produced and the London markets of Smithfield and Leadenhall where the ducks were sold. The emphasis being on the lived experiences of women within all parts of the industry.

My research challenges traditional approaches to the development of agrarian capitalism in England by proposing a new way of defining and measuring capitalist agrarian development. I employ an innovative methodology to reconstruct and map seventeenth- and eighteenth-century landholding in more detail than has previously been possible. Using this dataset, I examine the lives of individual cultivators, focusing on subletting, by-employment, life cycle, labour, and market orientation.

For my PhD, I am undertaking a comprehensive analysis of wage labour and poverty in Dorset from c.1680 to 1834. My research, which will be a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, will help bridge the gap in literature by directly linking these two topics. It will consider how individuals and households managed to survive at the subsistence level and what happened if they did not manage to ‘get by’. The research will focus on the Kingston Lacy estate, in east Dorset.

I am researching the post-Second World War reconstruction of Bristol, Plymouth and Exeter and the challenges the cities faced in rebuilding. I am particularly interested in the political and architectural continuity between the inter-war and post-war eras and the economic and financial constraints placed on blitzed cities in the late 1940’s. I am also researching the interwar planning and housing projects undertaken in each city to demonstrate the continuity in planning seen in the 20^th century. My other research interests include architectural history, the evolution of town planning and housing, local studies, and the history of Devon.