Latest Posts

  • Spotlight on: Dr Anne Lawrence

    I was born in Portsmouth on Trafalgar Day. My undergraduate degree was Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, at Cambridge; and my MA and PhD were in Medieval Art History, at the Courtauld Institute, London. My first academic job was as a lecturer… Continue reading

  • Spotlight on: Professor Matthew Worley

    I was born in 1970, grew up in Norwich and went to Heartsease Comprehensive. I did both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees  at the University of Nottingham. before being appointed at Reading, I worked at the University of Nottingham and  the… Continue reading

  • Anglo-Scottish Relations, Works from the University of Reading Special Collections

    The University of Reading’s Special Collections holds a number of works relating to the relationship between England and Scotland, the Union of the Crowns (1603) and the Union of Parliaments (1707). A selection of these have been brought together in… Continue reading

  • Placing the Emergence of the Scottish Labour Party in a Comparative Perspective

    By Jason Parry Scotland has always been a place of significance for the Labour Party. Many key figures in the party’s formative years were Scottish, including its first (albeit unofficial) leader, Keir Hardie, and its first prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald.… Continue reading

  • Spotlight on: Dr Rebecca Rist

    I was born in Toronto, Canada and grew up in Cambridge (UK). I did my undergraduate degree in Literae Humaniores at Corpus Christi College, Oxford and then moved for my postgraduate work to Cambridge. I did my M.Phil. and Ph.D.… Continue reading

  • Spotlight on: Dr Elizabeth Matthew

    I was born in Swansea but grew up in London. I was an undergraduate and postgraduate at the University of Durham. My research interests and publications focus on the political and social history of late medieval England and Ireland. I… Continue reading

  • Spotlight on: Dr Heike Schmidt

    I was born in Germany, although I have spent most of my life living elsewhere. I joined the History Department in 2013 as Lecturer in Modern History. My area of expertise is nineteenth and twentieth century African History, in particular… Continue reading

  • Spotlight on: Dr Rachel Foxley

    Having grown up a few miles further down the Thames valley, coming to Reading in 2004 was a return to home territory. My academic path as a student took me through different subjects as well as three different universities, but… Continue reading

  • Great Britain and Britishness

    By Oliver Finnegan In popular memory, the UK was born in 1707, with both England and Scotland passing their respective Acts of Union creating Great Britain. Union is seen as the recognition of shared nationality by two previously separate peoples… Continue reading

  • 1707 and all that

    By Esther Mijers As a Scottish historian working on the seventeenth-century politician William Carstares, who took part in the Union debates of the early 1700s and who was a staunch proponent, I am probably more attuned to the current debates… Continue reading