Dr Richard Sheldon

Lecturer in Social and Economic History

Office: 13 Woodland Rd

Phone: +44 (0)117 928 8394

Research interests

My research is largely focused on three main themes: I am interested in the history of radical politics and social protest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the history of social and economic ideas, and the comparative history of famines and famine relief in modern world history. Elements of all these concerns will be discussed in my forthcoming book The Politics of Bread in Eighteenth Century Britain.

Research supervision

I welcome inquiries and proposals for research supervision in areas close to my interests, please email me with ideas or questions.

Previous postgraduate research projects have included:

Artisans and the City: A Social History of Bristol’s Shoemakers and Tailors, 1770-1800 (PhD 2003)
Dugald Stewart and the Political Economy of the Scottish Enlightenment
The Great Western Cotton Company 1837-1933

Current topic supervisions:

The Felt Hat Industry of Bristol and South Gloucestershire 1540-1900
‘Commercialisation and the Social Organisation of Death in Provincial England, 1680-1820’
Socialism and Utopia in fin-de-siècle Britain and America
The Avonmouth Chemical Industry in the Twentieth Century
“To Encourage the Others”: The Cultural Role of Admiral John Byng’s Execution, 1756-1757

Teaching

I teach courses at all levels from the undergraduate first year through to taught research degrees.

Undergraduate Courses taught:

Enlightenment Europe
Europe’s Age of Revolutions 1770-1871
Radicalism and Class in Britain 1760-1850
Poverty and Famines in Historical Perspective

I also regularly contribute to the skills courses Approaching the Past and Rethinking History (Block of lectures on global economic history)

MA

I regularly contribute to the units Approaches to History, Research Methods, Cultural and Intellectual History, and also run an option course’ Ideology, Poverty and Famines.’

Selected Publications

'Practical Economics in Eighteenth-Century England: Charles Smith on the Grain Trade and the Corn Laws 1758-1772', Historical Research, 81, 2008
'John Thelwall, The Rights of Man and the Right to Live: Radical Politics, the People and Political Economy', in S. Poole ed., John Thelwall: Radical Romantic and Acquitted Felon (London, 2009)
'Development, Poverty and Famines: The Record of British Empire', in Mark Duffield and Vernon Hewitt eds., Development and Colonialism: the Past in the Present (Oxford, 2009)
‘Tories and Statisticians: War, Reaction and the Conservative Dimension to Modern statistical practice in Britain 1790-1802‘, forthcoming in History of the Human Sciences

Full Publications

Full list of Dr Sheldon's publications held in the University's IRIS publications database.

Note: some of the documents on this page are in PDF format. In order to view a PDF you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader

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