Richard Ansell

Bursaries The Society for the Study of Labour History offers financial support to PhD students, post-graduate researchers and independent scholars engaged in postgraduate-level research, as well as to BA and…

We offer #bursaries up to £900 for PhD students, post-graduate researchers and independent scholars engaged in postgraduate-level research in the field of labour history to fund essential archive or library research. Find out more sslh.org.uk/bursaries-gr...

Servants Abroad | Home Travel Journals by British Working People, 1765-1798

The OUP link won't work any more, but the book is now being distributed by Liverpool University Press, here: www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....

Join Dr Richard Ansell (Birkbeck) for a free online seminar. 5:30-7:30pm London time on Wed. Oct 8 via zoom. “Travel Journals and Other Traces of Servants on the Grand Tour”. From valets to maids, dis... TikTok video by Long 18th Century Seminar IHR

Join us next Wednesday (8-10) in person at the IHR or online from 5:30pm to Dr Richard Ansell’s paper ‘Travel Journals and Other Traces of Servants on the Grand Tour’. Register with the following link: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

Richard outlines the paper here:
www.tiktok.com/@long18thcen...

Thanks - I hope so!

Thank you - hope you’re doing well!

We are grateful to @leverhulme.ac.uk for funding the project, to @uclpress.bsky.social‬ for #OpenAccess publication and to the Marc Fitch Fund for a publication grant

No Country for Travellers? No Country for Travellers? explores the rise and nature of British travel to Spain and Portugal between 1760 and 1820, across a region that is conventionally overlooked in studies of British travel to...

Rosemary Sweet and I have written a book about #18thc British travellers to Spain and Portugal, and I'm really happy it's now free to download here: uclpress.co.uk/book/no-coun... (hard copies also available!) #skystorians #c18th

Funded by a Leverhulme Research Project Grant, Rosemary Sweet and @richardjansell.bsky.social's new book explores a region that is conventionally overlooked in studies of British travel to Europe. Read now: uclpress.co.uk/book/no-coun...

No Country for Travellers? No Country for Travellers? explores the rise and nature of British travel to Spain and Portugal between 1760 and 1820, across a region that is conventionally overlooked in studies of British travel to Europe. Drawing on extensive archival and printed sources left by travellers in the period, Rosemary Sweet and Richard Ansell reveal the unheralded […]

Congratulations to Rosemary Sweet and @RichardJAnsell! Their #OpenAccess book No Country for Travellers? published today. Read & download free at: bit.ly/4kJYgIl #TravelWriting #EighteenthCentury #Spain #Portugal

Website landing page of the Birkbeck Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Worlds.

Amidst the doom, I'm so excited to be welcoming people to the first annual Medieval and Early Modern Research Day at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social! More than 20 of Birkbeck's staff, students and research fellows will be giving micro-talks about a primary source. www.bbk.ac.uk/research/cen...

Attention all #earlymodern #skystorians! The Hakluyt Society is now on BSky. Follow for all things relating to the History of Travel and Exploration

@hakluytsociety.bsky.social

Thrilled to say that this is now fully Open Access!

Hopefully now available to any and all interested #earlymodern #skystorians

Immobility Abstract. Increasingly, since the early years of the twenty-first century, some have questioned the relevance of historians’ ‘fetishization of mobility’ in

Thrilled to see this published (free!) in Past&Present - though it unfortunately feels more relevant than ever... @pastpresentsoc.bsky.social
And feeling fortunate to have been able to do this with two of the most talented historians Malika Zehni & Lamin Manneh ❤️
academic.oup.com/past/advance...

Have at last finished the next chapter for my little book on Listening to #EarlyModern Travel Writing. In it I argue that travel writers both constructed and manipulated what I’ve dubbed ‘collective auditory knowledge’ in their representations of foreign lands. 🧵🗃️ (1/4)

Buzz Bones - the Original Fidget Spinner Buzz Bones - the Original Fidget Spinner: For as long as there have been children, there have been toys which make irritating noises. Originally made from the foot bones of a pig, Buzz Bones make a hu...

3D-print your own medieval toy! Thanks to my amazing collaborators Beth Kimber and @noreenmasud.bsky.social

www.instructables.com/Buzz-Bones-t...

No fewer than three members of Bristol’s English Department have found their monographs shortlisted for the University English Book Prize for Outstanding First Manuscript, across the 2023 and 2024 competitions! universityenglish.ac.uk/book-prize/

New article!

'Seeing Women in the Early English and Dutch East India Companies' is now available as an Advance Article with Historical Research.

It's been years of work, but I'm proud of this one. I hope #earlymodern #skystorians enjoy it!

Some context below:

academic.oup.com/histres/adva...

Poster advertising the 2025 Gender & History Lecture, which will be given by Dr Onni Gust. Information about the date, time and location can be found at the bottom of the poster, along with a QR to scan.

We are pleased to share the details for the Annual Gender & History Lecture, which will be given by Dr Onni Gust. Their talk is titled 'Kin: transgender history with and beyond the human'.

May 15, 2025, 15:00 - 16:30 (In person and Online)

Register here 👇

ticketpass.org/event/ELMPHJ...

New in the Jacobite Studies series ✨

The Jacobites and the grand tour by @drjeremyfilet.bsky.social - the first monograph to fully examine the intersecting networks of Jacobites and travellers to the continent.

Published today in partnership with the JST @funkyplaid.bsky.social

#Jacobites

John Walker's Commonplace Book: A Traveller in the 1670s, edited by Anthea Jones — Hobnob Press Travelling for pleasure in the 1670s required plenty of stamina. John Walker, a well-to-do country gentleman in his early thirties, rode many miles on horseback through England, Wales and Scotland, an...

I have my proof of this beauty! The previously unpublished c17 travel writings of John Walker, edit. by Anthea Jones. Walker travelled England, Scotland, Wales, France & more. It is fab. #17thCenturyTravel

www.hobnobpress.co.uk/books/p/john...

Proooooooofs #earlymodern

A poster announcing: A talk by Dr Brodie Waddell of Birkbeck University discussing how people used their writing strategies to survive and prosper Wednesday 2nd April  at 4pm (refreshments served from 3.45pm)Room: AH3.31(TBC) at Augustine House (CCCU Library)  All students, staff and guests are invited to book a free place (for catering purposes or receive the online link):  https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/events/2025/guest-lecture-brodie-waddell Please direct all email queries to: lb948@canterbury.ac.uk

'For Want of Worke': Writing Precarity in Seventeenth-Century England

Next Wednesday I'll be giving a talk at Canterbury Christchurch on how #EarlyModern working people used writing in their struggles to make ends meet. Come along if you're in the area!
www.canterbury.ac.uk/events/2025/...

Screenshot of the title and abstract for: 'A cordwainer’s wife in high politics: a microhistory of Mrs Caute' Abstract: This article introduces a hitherto unstudied pair of seventeenth-century texts, by the cordwainer’s wife Sarah Caute, which exercised political influence at the highest levels. Caute relates how in 1683–4, whilst in London, she experienced a sudden desire for herself and her six-year-old son Mathew to be baptised by Thomas Ken (1637–1711), who was then the prebend of Winchester (he would soon, in January 1685, be consecrated Bishop of Bath and Wells). Since he was a year old, Caute narrates, Mathew did not speak or walk and suffered ‘violent fitt[s]’ which ‘took him of his leges and his teeth fell out of his head at the roots…till they were all out’. Caute’s story reached the ears of Charles II and James II; thereby, she participated personally and in absentia in elite negotiations of confessional identity. Caute’s texts challenge the notion that non-elite women’s writing is scarce and of limited political interest.

How did the narrative of a cordwainer's wife about her disabled son, 'which she wrote her own self', fit into the religious politics of #EarlyModern England?

*NEW* #OpenAccess article by Laura Seymour, the first publication from #WrittenWorlds our project! 🗃️

Read it here: doi.org/10.1080/0268...

picture of the Dutch church in London.It's a rather straight building with a tiny bell tower, and a bunch of skyscrapers around it.

THIS FRIDAY! Excited to welcome @earlymodernjohn.bsky.social to the #LowCountries seminar with a talk on "The notaries of the Royal Exchange: migration and translation between London and the Low Countries"

28 March, 17:30 @ihr.bsky.social & zoom: www.history.ac.uk/events/notar... #EarlyModern

Hello! This is 'Material Identities, Social Bodies', a Leverhulme Trust-funded research project at the University of Birmingham. Led by @kharveyhistory.bsky.social and supported by @helenesfandiary.bsky.social, it explores embodiment & social identity in C18th British letters
socialbodies.bham.ac.uk

'The University of Bristol has embarked on a path like a death spiral' UCU members are opposed to academic departments across the university having to make at least a 50% operating surplus

www.bristol247.com/opinion/your...

Cover of Servants Abroad: Travel Journals by British Working People, 1765-1798, edited by Richard Ansell.

This week in Voices of the People at @bbkhistorical.bsky.social, we had a treat! @richardjansell.bsky.social joined us to talk about 18th-century servants' travel writing, based on his recent edition.

My favorite was Dewes's description of a seasick Swiss man who's only English was 'God Damn!' 🗃️

Thank you, and it was a pleasure – brilliant to meet everyone and to hear so many great ideas about the texts. I really enjoyed it!

Have a great time, and it looks like a brilliant session!