About

I am an Associate Professor in History and Impact based in the University Research and Knowledge Exchange Office (URKEO) at the University of Derby. I lead the Derby Impact Collaboration and Engagement (DICE) Network. I have worked extensively on the Higher Education impact and public engagement agendas. At Derby, I co-ordinated the Research Excellence Framework 2021 (REF 2021) submission; wrote the public and community engagement statement for the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) and I am co-leading the University's National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) Watermark submission. I also continue my own research into how the public engages with difficult histories.

Research interests

My research investigates how public institutions and societies deal with difficult, provocative or traumatic histories. My doctoral research and first book (Holocaust Remembrance between the National and the Transnational) considered how British trends in Holocaust memorialisation have influenced or intersected with European networks of commemorative activity such as the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust (2000) and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. My published research in this area includes papers on Holocaust education and anti-Semitism as well as the compilation of an edited collection with Dr Rachel Pistol on the life and works of Holocaust historian and public intellectual, Professor David Cesarani OBE.

In recent years, my research has diversified to consider how UK audiences have engaged with and remembered difficult, or provocative histories of conflict, imperialism, migration, imprisonment, enforced displacement and/or genocide. These considerations have related to understanding diasporic constructions of home and belonging (CoHaB ITN, 2012-2015), marginalised histories of the First World War, including lesser-known traumatic histories (AHRC Centre for Hidden Histories, 2016-2017; 2018-2019) and the eighteenth and nineteenth-century British punishment of transportation and issues of frontier violence and genocide in the Australian context (AHRC Digital Panopticon, 2017-2018; ‘Criminal Lives’ exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archives, 2017-2018).

Recent publications

• ‘Creating an Evaluative Framework for Understanding Public Engagement with the First World War’, Research For All, Vol. 4, No. 1 (February 2020): 66-86
• Co-edited with Rachel Pistol, The Jews, the Holocaust and the Public: The Legacies of David Cesarani (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
• ‘Holocaust Education and Contemporary Anti-Semitism’, History and Policy (November 2019)
• ‘Interrogating Europe’s Voids of Memory: Holocaust Trauma between the National and the Transnational’, in ‘Holocaust Intersections in 21st-Century Europe’, eds. Robert S. C. Gordon, Emiliano Perra, Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of Fondazione CDEC (No. 10, December 2016): 1-22
• Holocaust Remembrance between the National and the Transnational: A Case Study of the Stockholm International Forum and the First Decade of the ITF (London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015)
• ‘Holocaust Remembrance as “Civil Religion”: The Case of the Stockholm Declaration’, in Revisiting Holocaust Representation in the Post-Witness Era, ed. Tanja Schult and Diana Popescu (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 288-304
• ‘Intercultural Legacies of the International Task Force: Lithuania and the British at the turn of the Millennium’, Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Autumn 2013): 91-124
• To view all of my publications and extracts, please visit my Academia profile

Membership of professional bodies

• Member of the Steering and Skills Group for the Imperial War Museums National Lottery Heritage Fund supported Second World War and Holocaust Partnership Programme
• Honorary Associate Fellow of the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, The University of Leicester
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Member of the NCCPE's PEP Insights Research Team

Qualifications

• PhD History - Royal Holloway, University of London
• MSt History of Art and Visual Culture - St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford
• BA (Hons) Modern History - Mansfield College, University of Oxford