About

I am a Senior Lecturer in History, with a particular interest in British History in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I am also the programme leader for undergraduate History provision.

Research interests

My main area of research is in the history of British country houses and their families. I am especially interested in gender relations, letter writing practices, and the role of the country house in local, national and international networks. 

I am also interested in inclusive practice in learning and teaching in Higher Education, especially in relation to assessment and curriculum design.

Recent publications

• Ruth Larsen, Alice Marples, Matthew McCormack (eds). Innovations in Teaching History: Eighteenth-Century Studies in Higher Education. London: University of London 2024
• Ruth Larsen, ‘Let’s Talk About Sex: ‘BAD’ Approaches to Teaching the Histories of Gender and Sexualities’, in R.M. Larsen, A. Marples, and M. McCormack (eds), Innovations in Teaching History: Eighteenth-Century Studies in Higher Education. London: University of London 2024
• Ruth Larsen, Robin Sims and Ian Whitehead ‘Undergraduate Research Conference as Authentic Assessment: A Case Study from English and History’. Practitioner Research in Higher Education Journal. 2024
• R.M. Larsen, ‘Gender and the Home’ in C. Edwards (ed.) A Cultural History of Home: Enlightenment. London: Bloomsbury, 2021
• R.M. Larsen, ‘An Archaeology of Letter Writing: the correspondence of aristocratic women in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England’, C. Archer-Parré and M. Dick (eds) Pen and Print: communication in the Enlightenment. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020
• R.M. Larsen, Sisterly guidance: elite women, sorority and the life cycle, 1770–1860, in T. Dooley, M. O'Riordan and C. Ridgway (eds) Women and the country house in Ireland and Britain. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2018
• R.M. Larsen and Ian Whitehead (eds) Popular Experience and Cultural Representation of the Great War 1914-1918. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2017

Membership of professional bodies

• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Member of the Royal Historical Society

Qualifications

• BA (Hons) Archaeology, University of York
• MA Medieval Studies, University of York
• PhD on Elite Women in the Yorkshire Country House, 1685-1858, University of York

Recent conferences

• (with Professor Ian Whitehead) 'Employing Digital Tools to Support Continual Assessment', at Assessment in History: Reassessing the purpose and future of assessment in the study of History, Online Conference, History UK, October 2022
• 'Let’s talk about Sex' at Innovations in Teaching Eighteenth-Century History, Online Workshop hosted by University of Northampton, June 2020
• ‘Gendered spaces? Dynasty and domesticity in the English country house, 1750-1850’ Studies of Home IHR Seminar, University of London, June 2019
• Re-empowering the country house family? Domestic life in the country house guidebook 1945-2010, at Powering the Powerhouse, University of Sheffield and Chatsworth, June 2018
• “Upon my Lady Carlisle’s walking”: agency and the aristocratic woman's negotiation of space. Keynote Lecture at Women’s Negotiations of Space, 1500-1900 conference, University of Hull, January 2018

Teaching responsibilities

I teach modules on material culture, British country houses, gender history, historical methodologies, and public history. I also supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations on a wide range of historical topics.