Archaeology and History

I am a historian of Britain and its maritime world, focusing on the Royal Navy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. My research and teaching look beyond the traditional remit of maritime history to analyse the political, social and cultural forces which created the Navy, and which were in turn shaped by its activities. My most recent book Tempest: The Royal Navy and the Age of Revolutions was published by Yale University Press in 2023 and won the prestigious Anderson Prize. I have co-edited two books - A New Naval History and The Maritime World of Early-Modern Britain that explore the ways in which maritime and naval history can engage with wider historical scholarship. In 2020-21 I was the Kemble Fellow in Maritime History at the Huntington Library in California, US. More recently, I co-organised a conference at the Huntington Library entitled 'Maritime Histories From Below'. I am a member of the University of Exeter’s Centre for Maritime Historical Studies. Prior to working at Exeter I was a curator at the National Maritime Museum.

 

 

Research areas

 

I use the history of the Royal Navy to engage with broader historiographies, and I am committed to exploring the different ways naval and maritime history can be conceived. My research falls under these main headings:

 

Maritime histories from below

My most recent book project investigated the relationship between naval sailors and the 'Age of Revolution'. Published in 2023 by Yale University Press, Tempest argues that sailors were important political actors: they were conscious of wider social and cultural change, and had agency in the events of the day. This project also considers the response of the British state – through the guise of the Admiralty and other naval administrative bodies – to potential subversion in the navy’s ranks, and places their actions in the wider context of state oppression in the era. My next project is a social history of naval naval desertion, analysing the aims, means and afterlives of eighteenth and nineteenth century naval deserters. 

 

The practice of naval and maritime history

I have co-edited two volumes of essays that highlight new approaches and perspectives on naval and maritime history. The first, entitled A New Naval History and co-edited with Quintin Colville, was published by Manchester University Press in 2019. The second, entitled The Maritime World of Early-Modern Britain and co-edited with Richard Blakemore, was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2020. In 2025 I publihsed an article in the English Historical Review that considers the first works of naval history produced in England in the early 1700s, and the longer-term implications for the sub-discipline.

 

Visual and material culture

My research uses visual and material culture to explore ideas of representation and identity. I have published on eighteenth-century naval balladry and material consumption more broadly, considering how people from across the social spectrum thought about the navy and naval service. I have also co-written a trade book on naval caricature in the second half of the eighteenth century.

 

The development of the British state

This was the main focus of my PhD thesis and subsequent monograph. I am interested in how the increase in size and capability of the Royal Navy influenced the development of government bureaucracies and led to an increase in centralised administration. My work has also explored how ideas of professionalism and meritocracy were inculcated within the British state, and the emergence of a ‘contractor economy’ in the eighteenth century. In November 2015 I was awarded the Jan Glete Prize for Maritime History for my work in this area.

 

 

Research supervision

 

I have supervised six PhD students through to completion:

  • Luke Walters (2026), 'New perspectives on Maritime Predation: Context and Continuity in the British Maritime World, 1686-1725', University of Reading, AHRC-funded
  • Shreya Gupta (2025), 'Coins and colonialism between South Asia and Britain: tracing numismatic networks of collecting from field to museum', University of Exeter, AHRC-funded
  • Sam Jones (2024), ‘Back from the Brink: Laying the Foundations of the Modern RNLI, 1850-1883', University of Exeter
  • Dukhee Yun (2021), ‘Early-Modern British Infantry Combat: Its perception, Realities and the Question of Modernity, 1642-1745’, University of Exeter
  • Anna McKay (2019), The history of British prison hulks, 1776-1864’, University of Leicester, AHRC-funded
  • Catherine Beck (2017), 'Patronage and the Royal Navy, 1775-1815’, University College London, AHRC-funded

 

 

I currently supervise the following PhD students:

  • Lisa Wojahn (2022 - present), 'Royal Naval Officers’ Wives in the Long Nineteenth Century: Characteristics,Courtships, Contributions, and Community'.
  • Tom Gayton (2023 - present), 'A comparative study of Dorset during the first English Civil War (1642 to 1646) and the conflict’s various effects on costal, urban and garrison communities'.
  • Hannah Gibbons (2023 - present), 'Maritime Matriarchs: women, credit, goods and services in the dockland communities of eighteenth-century London'
  • Sam Hill (2024 - present), 'Moonlit Resistance?: Did smuggling, wrecking, and opposition to impressment embody a form of resistance to the coastal deprivation faced within Devon, Cornwall, and the Isles of Scilly between 1750-1850?
  • Zara Money (2024 - present), 'Along the Shoreline: Women’s roles in the early modern maritime economy of the West Country'.
  • Lucas Radford (2025 - present), 'Bodies of Water: Embodied Competence and Identity in the Royal Navy of the Long-Eighteenth Century'

     

I welcome enquiries from students working on aspects of British naval and maritime history. I would be particularly keen to supervise students in the following areas:

  • Social histories of the maritime world
  • The politics of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era
  • War, society and culture in the long-eighteenth-century
  • The representation of the maritime world in art and culture
  • The development of the British state

 

Individuals interested in discussing a potential PhD topic should email me a 500 word outline of their proposed research topic and a copy of their CV.

 

I have successfully secured funding for four PhD projects via the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Scheme, and am keen to develop further research collaborations.

 

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