Dr Laura Rowe

I’m an historian of Britain and the early part of the twentieth century, focusing particularly on the cultural and social history of the Great War, and the Royal Navy in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I’ve also worked on morale, discipline and combat motivation; homosexuality and the armed forces; the construction of heroism; and the spread of Bolshevism in inter-war Britain. My first monograph Morale and Discipline in the Royal Navy in the Great War was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018, and I’m now working on a BA/Leverhulme-funded project: ‘Communities of Mourning: Manning Ports and the Memory of the Great War’.

This term my office hours (1000-1100 & 1400-1500 on Tuesdays during term time) will take place over Teams. To make an appointment please click here

I completed my BA in Modern History (1999-2002) and MSt in Historical Studies at Worcester College, Oxford. After taking a year away from academia to learn German I moved to the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London. There I undertook a PhD thesis entitled ‘Morale and Discipline in the Royal Navy during the First World War’. Following completion of my PhD I was award the Alan Pearsall Post Doctoral Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research in London. I was appointed as a Lecturer in Naval History at the University of Exeter in September 2009. I have been a member of the International Society for First World War Studies since 2003, and in 2009 was Chair of the organising committee of their Fifth bi-annual conference, held at the Imperial War Museum, London.

I am currently supervising PhDs on the RNLI in the mid-19th century.

I would welcome PhDs on the social and cultural history of the Great War; morale, discipline and combat motivation; homosexuality and the armed services in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the Royal Navy in the 19th and 20th centuries; and other related topics.