
I am in my final year of a +3 studentship on the Economic and Social History pathway. My research explores the historical relationship between gender and state-sponsored urban development in late twentieth century Britain. I am particularly interested in how new built environments reflected and reinforced gender relations, whether women adhered to or subverted the roles prescribed by deterministic architecture and planning, and how gender intersected with other social relations such as class and race.
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I am a PhD student in the Department of History at the University of Liverpool, nearing the end of my second year. My research focuses on the history of egg production and consumption in post-war Britain, examining broader societal changes in consumption and public attitudes. Over the past year, I’ve discovered exciting connections between my research and environmental history, particularly in how food consumption and agricultural practices have impacted the environment.
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Since the main archive I had planned to use has admitted to me that they probably won’t be re-opening any time soon after all, I have had to be creative to find materials relevant to my topic. That is why, over the first one hundred weeks of my PhD, I have visited ten different archives across England. That’s translated to somewhere around four weeks sitting in reading rooms going through tape recordings, papers, microfiche, and one television documentary. Everything ranging from tiny rooms in basements of local museums to the grand corrals in the National Archives.
Read MorePublic speaking has always been a bit of a challenge for me. Prior to starting my PhD, I spent a long time becoming an expert in avoiding ways of having to confront my difficulties with public speaking, which have followed me since my early school days when I would struggle with stuttering and speaking very quietly. Although I’ve become confident enough in speaking in small groups, such as seminars, there is something very unsettling about a large audience that takes me back to the same difficulties I’d had in primary school with confidence and clear speech, and when giving a conference presentation or a lecture, I often found myself very anxious and unsure of how I was coming across to my audience.
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