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Biography

I am a historian of the French Revolution, and of the social and cultural history of conflicts in Europe and the Atlantic world more generally in the period between the 1760s and 1840s. I have written a number of books, of which the best-known is probably The Terror (2005), and edited a major collection of essays, The Oxford Handbook of the French Revolution, (2015). I recently edited the Routledge Handbook of French History (2024), a comprehensive overview with over sixty contributors. I also regularly give lectures and workshops for A-level students, and have written the Connell Guide to the French Revolution, (London: Connell, 2016) especially for this cohort.

I am a former President of the Society for the Study of French History, which makes available a range of support for postgraduate researchers through its website: I am committed to furthering equality and diversity within the community of French historians in the UK, and oversaw the introduction of the Society’s first Conference Code of Practice with this in mind.

My personal research interests embrace the ways in which the conscious and unconscious norms of pre-1789 French society and culture collided with the new conditions created by revolutionary upheaval, and the extent to which many of the subsequent conflicts developed from such collisions. I am interested in the current focus on emotions in revolutionary history, but believe that we need to dig deeper into how feelings drove action, on the one hand, and on the other were incorporated into narratives of identity and plotting that fitted existing cultural forms. An example of my writing on the subject is here: 

Most recently I have been the holder of a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2021-24), exploring the topic of trust across French political and cultural realms before and during the Revolution. Recent publications from this project are available on open access, and I am currently working with Oxford University Press to develop a book-length summary of this work.

I have taught widely across the undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Portsmouth, and currently deliver core teaching on methodologies - What is history? How do we do it? What tools are most useful to help us answer different kinds of questions? - as well as contributing specialist knowledge of eighteenth-century and revolutionary France to first- and third-year modules.

I am interested in supervising PhD research projects in any area of French history from the later eighteenth century through to the mid nineteenth, with a particular focus on the social and cultural history of the 1789 Revolution, and subsequent revolutionary episodes down to 1848-51. I am also interested in potential comparative projects on revolution and resistance in the Atlantic world in the same period.