Sasha Handley

Sasha Handley specialises in early modern social and cultural history in the British Isles, with a particular interest in histories of supernatural belief, daily life, material culture and the history of emotions. She teaches across a wide range of courses in early modern British and European history. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Chair of the North West Early Modern Seminar. Sasha leads the research group Embodied Emotions at the University of Manchester, which has established an international research collaboration with scholars at the University of Melbourne entitled 'Objects and Emotions: Rituals, Routines, Collections and Communities'.

Since 2011 Sasha has collabarated with the National Trust to engage the pubic with aspects of her research. At Ham House she ran guided tours for three years, entitled '40 Winks: Sleeping Habits Through the Ages', and has also written a tour script for the staff and volunteers at the house to enable them to run tours of their own on a regular basis. Sasha has also written room guides for the bedchambers at Ham House and delivered a training session to curators and volunteers at Ham House on historic sleeping practices. More recently, she has been awarded AHRC funding to pursue the impact and engagement project 'How we used to sleep' with Little Moreton Hall. The project involves a wide range of participants ranging from mental healthcare professional and service users, to social enterprises and school groups across the northwest region.

Sasha has collaborated with a range of museums and heritage institutions. During her tenure as Visiting Research Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum, she has produced new catalogue entries for key items in the Museum's collections and updated existing entries. Sasha has also conducted important new research and produced a conservation report about a key item within the collections of the Museum of London in collaboration with a scientific advisor from the University of Manchester.