Dr Christopher Donaldson
Senior Lecturer in Cultural HistoryProfile
My research is concerned with the cultural history of landscape, primarily in Britain, with an emphasis on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I have published widely on the history of northern England, especially Cumbria, the English Lake District and the Anglo-Scottish border region. My other research interests include print history and historical geography. I am an affiliate of the Regional Heritage Centre, the Cumbria County History Trust and Decolonising Lancaster University.
My current research projects mainly focus on the global histories of national landmarks and landscapes. I am currently finishing a book project entitled A Shadow of a Magnitude, which explores the history of people of African and Afro-Indian ancestry in the English Lake District between the 1600s and 1800s.
In addition, I am also involved in collaborative research projects focused on the historical geography of Cumbria, including 'Envisaging Landscapes and Naming Places: the Lake District before the Map'.
I am a member of the Council of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, and I also edit the Society's News.
Career Details
My career at Lancaster began in 2012, when I was hired as a research assistant on the ERC-funded Spatial Humanities project. I worked at the University of Birmingham between 2014 and 2016, when I returned to Lancaster as a Lecturer to work with colleagues as part of a Leverhulme Trust-funded project entitled Geospatial Innovation in the Digital Humanities. I completed my University education in the USA. I received my BA from Penn State University in 2004 and my PhD from Stanford University in 2012.
Current Teaching
I contribute to both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in the Department of History and LICA. Modules I convene include HIST107: 'Witches', Warriors, and Slavers: Exploring the History of Lancaster; HIST225: Contested Grounds: Colonialism, Heritage and the History of Protected Landscapes; and HIST273: Sex, Satire and British Society, 1660–1901. I also supervise independent undergraduate and postgraduate research projects.
Qualifications
I am a Fellow of The Higher Education Academy.
PhD Supervision Interests
I welcome enquiries from potential students interested in completing theses or dissertations on topics related to the following: history of tourism, leisure and recreation; history of national parks, parklands and landscape conservation; heritage studies; print history (1700 to present); historical geography; landscape history; modern regional history.
Selected Publications
John Brown's 'Description of the Lake at Keswick': New Clues and Clarifications
Donaldson, C.E. 1/12/2019 In: The Library. 20, 4, p. 462–474. 13 p.
Journal article
'The Travelling Carriage in Old Times': John Ruskin and the Lakes Tour in the Age of William IV
Donaldson, C.E. 1/06/2018 In: Yearbook of English Studies. 48, p. 101-123 . 23 p.
Journal article
Deep Mapping and Romanticism: 'Practical' Geography in the Poetry of Sir Walter Scott
Donaldson, C.E. 1/12/2020 In: Romantic Cartographies. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press p. 211–231. 21 p.
Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Henry Hobhouse's Tour Through Cumbria in 1774
Donaldson, C.E., Dunning, R., Winchester, A.J.L. 9/01/2018 Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society.
Scholarly edition
From the Mines to the Mountains: John Dalton's 'Descriptive Poem' of 1755 and Contemporary Accounts of Cumberland & Westmorland
Donaldson, C.E., Matthews, S. 2018 Carlisle : Bookcase. 210 p. ISBN: 9781912181155.
Book
Digital Heritage
Alker, Z., Donaldson, C.E. 27/04/2018 In: Journal of Victorian Culture. 23, 2, 2 p.
Editorial
Locating the beautiful, picturesque, sublime and majestic: spatially analysing the application of aesthetic terminology in descriptions of the English Lake District
Donaldson, C.E., Gregory, I.N., Taylor, J.E. 1/04/2017 In: Journal of Historical Geography. 56, p. 43-60. 18 p.
Journal article
Shifting interpretations of the English Lake District
Donaldson, C.E. 16/06/2016 In: Changing perceptions of nature. London : Boydell & Brewer p. 145-152. 11 p.
Chapter (peer-reviewed)
Mapping ‘Wordsworthshire’: a GIS study of literary tourism in Victorian Lakeland
Donaldson, C., Gregory, I., Murrieta-Flores, P. 14/08/2015 In: Journal of Victorian Culture. 20, 3, p. 287-307. 21 p.
Journal article
All Publications
Ben Franklin goes to Borrowdale: Scientific Adventures in the English Lakes
06/06/2022 → 22/11/2022
Research
Envisaging Landscapes and Naming Places: the Lake District before the Map
01/05/2021 → 30/11/2022
Research
Drawn from the Ground: Discovering Graphite and its Secrets
01/08/2019 → 31/12/2019
Research
Augmented Humanity: Does the Human Enhance the Machine or the Machine Enhance the Human?
01/01/2019 → 29/10/2019
Research
Augmented Humanity: Does the Human Enhance the Machine or the Machine Enhance the Human?
01/01/2019 → 29/10/2019
Research
Pelagios 6
01/01/2016 → 31/12/2017
Research
Geospatial Innovations in the Digital Humanities: A Deep Map of the English Lake District
19/10/2015 → 19/10/2018
Other
FP7: Spatial Humanities
01/01/2012 → 31/12/2016
Research
Victoria Country History 2024-2025
01/01/1900 → …
Research
Harriet Martineau: Resident of Ambleside, Citizen of the World
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
A Shadow of a Magnitude: Black Lives in the Lake District, c. 1660–1860
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Three Abolitionists in Ambleside
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
'Far from parochial': Cumbrian Quakers in the Atlantic World, 1656–1812
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Carlisle in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Sidelights on some Cumbrian-American connections
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
'A Shadow of a Magnitude': Black Lives in the English Lake District, 1660–1870
Invited talk
Being Human 2022
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
The Influence of the Ordnance Survey on the Lake District’s ‘Name-scape’
Invited talk
Harriet Martineau: Resident of Ambleside, Citizen of the World
Invited talk
Locating Ullswater: Maps, Guides and the English Lake District
Invited talk
'Glories of the Mine': Coal and the Transformation of West Cumberland
Invited talk
We do like to be beside the seaside – tourism and coastal towns in North West England
Other
The influence of the Ordnance Survey on the Lake District’s namescape
Invited talk
Travelling in Climate Time
Other
Mines and Mountains: Benjamin Franklin’s Tours of Northern England
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
World’s Apart: The Slave Trade and other aspects of Cumbria’s Black History
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
From Mines to Mountains: Early Tourism in the English Lake District
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Geographical Methods & the Digital Humanities
Invited talk
John Ruskin's Shells
Invited talk
John Ruskin and the ‘Poetry of Architecture’
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
'The Glories of the Mine': Whitehaven and Perceptions of Cumbria’s ‘Energy’ Coast in the 1700s
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
‘Rolling at a Jog Trot Pace': Ruskin’s Ethics of Travel
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
'Lady of the Lakes': Harriet Martineau in Ambleside
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Ruskin at 200
Invited talk
John Ruskin and Architecture
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Being Human 2019
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Historic Vegetation and Natural Heritage
Invited talk
Satire: From Georgian Whitehaven to Spitting Image
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
The golden age of satire? Late-Georgian satirical prints
Consultancy
'The traveller will be liable to disappointment who visits Carlisle'
Invited talk
Digital Humanities 2019
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Transatlantic Studies Association annual conference 2019
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Art & industry in early Whitehaven
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Romantic-Era Lakeland: Walking, Viewing, Writing
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Furness Abbey Through Time
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Early Guide Books & Tourist Accounts of Craven
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
From Mines to Mountains: Early History and Poetry of the Cumberland Coast
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Travels and Tours in Cumbria before the Discovery of the Lakes
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Lancaster Castle and Northern English History
Other
Over Sands to the Lakes': Journeys over Morecambe Bay before and after the Age of Steam
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Northerness Workshop
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Furness Abbey, Post-Reformation: The Romance of the Ruins
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
'Undefiled by the Intrusion of Bad Taste' A Few Early Impressions of Haweswater
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Uplandish
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Riches of Gilsland
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Coaching in Victorian Lakeland
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar
Romanticism Takes to the Hills
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
By Duddon's Side
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Spatial Humanities
Invited talk
How to do Things with Millions of Words
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Spatial Humanities Conference 2016
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
'Consuming (the) Victorians'
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Mountain Legacies: An Afternoon of Talks, with ‘Mountains in Mind’
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
Norman Nicholson: Poet-Prophet of the Cumbrian Edgelands
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Campus in the City
Festival/Exhibition/Concert
The North East Forum in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
British Association for Romantic Studies' 2014 Early Career and Postgraduate Conference
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
‘Mapping Norman Nicholson’s Letters’, Mapping and Measuring 20th-Century Correspondence: An Exhibit, Everydayness and the Event: Modernist Studies Association 2013 Annual Meeting, University of Sussex
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
'Everydayness and the Event', MSA 15, University of Sussex
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
'Integrating Corpus Linguistics, Spatial Technologies and Literary Analysis', Corpus Lingusitics 2013, Lancaster University
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
'Digital Texts and Geographical Technologies in the Digital Humanities: A Symposium', Lancaster University
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
Placing Morecambe Symposium, Lancaster University
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Thomas Pennant’s Tours: Second Multidisciplinary Workshop, National Library of Wales
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience
'Theorising Surfaces Workshop', Lancaster University
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
Landscape and Writing Reading Group, Lancaster University
Participation in workshop, seminar, course
- DSI - Society
- Regional Heritage Centre