Menu Close
Professor of Modern History, University of Sheffield

My research interests are, broadly, in modern British political history (principally the period 1918 to 1945), the history of political extremism (with a focus on right-wing extremism in Britain), women's history and gender studies (particularly women in politics, and the construction of gender identities in the political sphere), comparative fascism (particularly gender and fascism in comparative perspective), history of emotion, and race and ethnicity in the British context.

My most recent book, 'Guilty Women', Foreign Policy and Appeasement in Interwar Britain (Palgrave, 2015) examine women’s participation and their representation in British foreign affairs between the wars; women’s political activism in a range of internationalist, feminist and pacifist organizations; women’s contribution to resistance to fascism at home and abroad; and the gendering of the appeasement in the late 1930s. I also co-edited and contributed to The Munich Crisis, Politics and the People (Manchester University Press, 2021). Initially funded by a Wellcome Seed Award, my current project explores the relationship between macro socio-political crises and suicide, offering a case study of the suicide epidemic triggered by the fallout of the Munich Crisis in Britain.

Experience

  • –present
    Reader in Modern History, University of Sheffield