Dr Sophie Thérèse Ambler

My research explores political ethics and war in the central and later Middle Ages, in western Europe and the Holy Land. Recently I have focused on England’s first revolution, when Simon de Montfort earl of Leicester (d.1265) led a campaign to seize power from the king and establish conciliar government, exploring the cultural, intellectual and military contexts that made the revolution possible. My next major area of research brings together social, cultural and intellectual history to explore the experiences of troops operating in the British Isles and France between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, as well as the shifting patterns of thought concerned with soldiers and their roles and responsibilities in conflict.

Dr Baihui Duan

Baihui is an environmental historian of early modern East Asia. Her academic interests encompass the history of war, environment, climate, animals, disease, medicine, and governance in East Asia, roughly after the Imjin War (also known as the Great East Asian War of 1592-1598). Combining approaches from historical and geospatial analysis, she examines how nature and infectious diseases shaped migration, disaster relief, medical care, and governance in early modern Korea. She considers how the impact of epidemics spread beyond Korea’s borders to affect East Asian military strategy, commerce, diplomacy, and the circulation of medical knowledge, shedding light on interlinked histories of infectious diseases and environmental crises in the region. Through a comparison with the European history of public health, her project also contributes to the neglected field of epidemic management in early modern East Asia, opening up questions of power and its political meaning in global discourses of health. She is currently completing her book project, Relieving the People: Epidemic Management and Confucian Statecraft in Post-Imjin Korea.

Supervisory interests: I welcome projects in environmental history and East Asian history. I am particularly interested in supervising research on epidemics, disaster relief, governance, and the roles of climate, animals, and disease in shaping early modern societies. I also encourage comparative and interdisciplinary approaches, including global histories of public health, environmental crises, and the circulation of knowledge.

Professor Fiona Edmonds

I am a historian of medieval Britain and Ireland, with research interests ranging from the sixth century to the twelfth. My work knows no borders, focusing on maritime connections and now-lost kingdoms. Particular areas of interest are the Irish Sea region in the Viking Age, and 'Middle Britain' (northern England and southern Scotland) prior to the Anglo-Scottish border, investigating links between the kingdom of Northumbria and the Gaelic-speaking world, and the connections between Northumbria, Strathclyde and Wales. I am interested in interdisciplinary work, for example combining historical and linguistic evidence through the study of names, and I am the Director of the Regional Heritage Centre.

Dr Paul Antony Hayward

I convene the MA module 'Medieval Primary Sources: Genre, Rhetoric and Transmission'.

I am an historian of communication, historical practice and classical culture in the European Middle Ages, with a geographical and chronological focus on later Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England. I have written about all major historical genres that flourished in this context—hagiography, chronicles and rhetorical histories – and am presently working on the genesis and reception of William of Malmesbury's Histories of the English, as well as bells, communication and society in medieval England.

Professor Will Pettigrew

My work assesses how the history of Britain has been shaped by global forces as well as the effects that Britain has had on the rest of the world. These interests have led me to complete studies of the development of the British contribution to the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, the constitutional determinants of British economic growth, the history of English trading corporations, and the role of international trade in shaping the English constitution. I'm interested in supervising research in any aspect of Global British history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Dr Nicholas Radburn

I am a historian of the Atlantic World, with a particular focus on the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, currently investigating slave-trading merchants in Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and how their profit-motivated decisions shaped the experiences of the enslaved people who they bought and sold.

I am a co-manager of the National Endowment for the Humanities funded project Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, a digital memorial to the 12.5 million Africans who were forcibly transported through the slave trade. I am also developing a digital model of a slave ship, and a database of British slave trading merchants, including several thousand individuals in north-west England.

Dr Alexander Wragge-Morley

My interest lies in the history of science and medicine. Through my research and teaching, I seek to understand how people in the past obtained knowledge through sensory experience. In particular, I ask how scientific and medical practitioners have related the pleasures and pains of the senses to the work of knowledge production. In doing so, I bring together histories of science, medicine, the body, the neurosciences, art, literature, and religion. I also have broad interests in the medical humanities, organizing research, podcasts, and events dealing with ideas about the human mind, bringing together scientists, artists, and humanities scholars.