Dr Julia Neville

Dr Julia Neville, FRHistS, came late to the study of history after a long career as an NHS manager and executive director. She gained her PhD in the University of Exeter’s Department of Politics, following completion in 2010 of her thesis, Explaining Variations in Municipal Hospital Provision in the 1930s: a study of councils in the far South West.

Since that time Neville has extended her work on the history of local hospital services before the NHS with a study of First World War voluntary hospital provision and one of cottage hospitals. ‘Cottage Hospitals and Communities in East Devon’, published in Healthcare in Ireland and Britain, 1850-1970.

Over the past fifteen yeears Neville has worked as a community collaborative historian, leading on behalf of Devon History Society a number of research projects to which historians across the county have contributed. These have covered education, aspects of life on the Home Front in the First World War, the movement for women’s suffrage and most recently a study of Devon in the 1920s, which generated a collection of over 70 essays, available at www.devonhistorysociety.org.uk . In 2025 she was awarded an Outstanding Individual Contribution award by the British Association for Local History and elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Neville’s personal research interests are mainly in early nineteenth and twentieth century social history, exploring social change in different communities. She has published ;’Country butchers in ‘Country Butchers and the City in the Exe Valley, 1840 to 1900’ (IHR series) and co-authored ‘Schools for the Poor in mid-nineteenth century Devon’ (Studies in Church History). She has explored the changing place of women in early twentieth century society in an article ‘Challenge, Conformity and Casework in Interwar England’ in Women’s History Review, and as the author of several biographical essays in ‘Devon Women in Public and Professional Life: 1900-1950: Votes, Voices and Vocations, published by the University of Exeter Press. Neville’s current area of research is the development of local government and its impact in Devon in the 1920s.