Professor Helen Berry

I specialise in British history from about 1660 to 1830, and I'm especially passionate about encouraging people to think more broadly about British history in a global and comparative context. My research and teaching are closely linked, and cover a wide range of themes, from histories of production and consumption in Britain during the eighteenth century, to how global trade and economics shaped personal experiences, families and communities. My book, Orphans of Empire: the Fate of London's Foundlings (Oxford: OUP, 2019) considers the connection between philanthropy, child welfare and the contribution of charity apprentices to the socio-economic development of Britain's 'inner empire' at home. I have an ongoing interest in transdisciplinary research on the Anthropocene which seeks to deepen our understanding of the origins and causes of our present climate emergency, working collaboratively towards ameliorative action.

I did my undergraduate degree in History at the University of Durham, and later went on to study for a PhD at Jesus College, Cambridge, where I wrote a thesis on late-seventeenth century coffee house society and the periodical press of the 1690s. This led to the publication of my earliest articles on John Dunton's Athenian Mercury, and my first book, Gender, Society and Print Culture in Late-Stuart England. A spin-off article on coffee house slang won the RHS Alexander Prize (2001). My first employment in undergraduate teaching and research was at the Universities of Cambridge, Essex and Northumbria. I was a postdoctoral researcher for the project Nationalising Taste: National Identity and Local Culture in Eighteenth-Century England led by Professor Jeremy Gregory, which led to a number of collaborative interdisciplinary publications (encompassing History, Art History, Archaeology, Literature and Architectural History) and a long-standing interest in landscape and environmental history from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution to modern times (Northern Landscapes). I was appointed Lecturer at Newcastle University in 2000, where I became a Professor in 2012 and remained until 2020. In that time, I developed my research and educational interests and networks, from early explorations in the history of gender, the family and alternative family structures (co-editing with Elizabeth Foyster The Family in Early Modern England, and my book about queer marriage, The Castrato and His Wife), to the development of a consumer society and environmental history in the long eighteenth century. I have also had a growing interest in decolonising British history, particularly through working with archaeologists and architectural historians on the Gertrude Bell archive at Newcastle University. I have had close ties with research institutions in the USA and was a Visiting Fellow at the Huntington Library in California and the Harry Ransom Research Center (Austin, TX). An international collaboration with Professors Jason Kelly and Phil Scarpino (IUPUI, Indiana, where I am a Visiting Professor), led to my becoming Co-Founder of the Anthropocene Research group at Newcastle, and Co-I for 'Living Deltas' a large-scale interdisciplinary research hub involving humanities scholars, earth scientists and physical geographers, as well as a large number of external stakeholders both in the UK and the Global South. I have been nominated by undergraduate students for Teaching Excellence Awards, and to date have supervised and examined over 20 PhD students. My most recent OUP book, Orphans of Empire: the Fate of London's Foundlings, was part-funded by the British Academy and was shortlisted for the 2019 Cundill Prize, 'the world's biggest history prize, for books of global significance'. A native of Plymouth, I returned to the South West in 2020 to take up the post of Professor of History and Head of the Department of History at the University of Exeter.

I welcome inquiries from prospective PhD students with research projects that relate to my research expertise, particularly in the following areas: eighteenth-century social history; the history of genders and sexualities; family and alternative family structures from the early modern to the modern period; early newspapers and the evolution of the mass media; production and consumption in Britain and the British Empire; communities, landscape and place, particularly in relation to metropolitan/provincial cultures and trade. Please send me a 500 word outline of your PhD research proposal and copy of your CV if you would like to make an inquiry.