Centre for European and International Studies Research (CEISR)

Profile

As a researcher, my main interest has always lain with the French Revolution, and with the complex ways in which succeeding generations of historians have sought to co-opt or condemn its relationship to European modernity. My own work has evolved from an initial concern to reposition the agency of non-elite subjects in this process (culminating in my book, The French Revolution and the People, 2004), towards two further strands of analysis. The first concerns itself with the absences and hypocrisies attendant on violence, and especially ‘popular violence’ in revolutionary circumstances, and formed part of the discussion in my book The Terror (2005), as well as some ongoing more specific work. The second involves an attempt to grapple with the complex resonances of cultural change in the decades before 1789, and their potential shaping influence, as ‘cultural forms’, on the mental apparatus of people attempting to construct, and live through, the ‘political processes’ of revolutionary modernity.

Qualifications

• D.Phil (York)
• F.R.Hist.S
• FHEA

Research Clusters

• Social, Historical and Cultural Change in Europe

Discipline Areas

• History

Research CV

Authored Books

• The Savage Storm, Britain on the brink in the age of Napoleon, (Little, Brown, 2012) ISBN 978-1-4087-0192-8
• 1789: The threshold of the modern age, (London: Little, Brown, 2008). x + 438 pp. ISBN 978 03167 31973.
• The Terror: Civil War in the French Revolution, (London: Little, Brown, 2005). vi + 424 pp. ISBN 03168 61812. US edition, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2006; translation rights agreed for Chinese, Greek, Portuguese, Spanish.
• The French Revolution and the People (London: Hambledon & London, 2004) xviii + 301pp ISBN 18528 5295X
• Massacre at the Champ de Mars: popular dissent and political culture in the French Revolution, (Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Royal Historical Society, 2000). 'Studies in History' new series. ISBN 08619 32471.
• French Society in Revolution, 1789-1799, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999). 'New Frontiers in History' series. ISBN 07190 51908 [H/b], 07190 51916 [P/b].

Journal Articles

• Living the Revolutionary Melodrama: Robespierre’s Sensibility and the Construction of Political Commitment in the French Revolution’, Representations 2011, 114, pp. 103–128. ISSN 0734–6018, electronic ISSN 1533–855X.
• 'The Shifting Landscape of Revolutionary Interpretations: A Death of the Past and a Rebirth of History?', French Historical Studies 2009, 32[4], 2009, pp. 647-653
• 'Neighbourhood Policing in Paris from Old Regime to Revolution: The Exercise of Authority by the District de St-Roch, 1789-1791', French Historical Studies, 29(2) Feb 2006, pp231-260, ISSN 0016-1071, DOI 10.1215/00161071-29-2-231 
• 'The Micro-physics of Öffentlichkeit? Habermas, Foucault and the Administration of Democratic Space in the Palais-Royal, 1789-1790', Cultural and Social History,3(2) Apr 2006, pp145-166, ISSN 1478-0038, DOI 10.1191/1478003806cs056oa 
• 'Can Culture Really Explain Politics?: "Interdisciplinary" Historiography, Enlightenment and Revolution', SVEC, 2005:04, pp. 260-69, 0435-2866 
• 'The Denial of Social Conflict in the French Revolution: Discourses around the Champ de Mars Massacre, 17 July 1791', French Historical Studies, 22(2) 1999, pp. 183-209.
• 'Press and Public in the French Revolution: A Parisian Case-Study from 1791', European History Quarterly, 28(1) 1998, pp. 51-80.
• 'Beyond Irony and Relativism: What is postmodern history for?' Rethinking History 1(3) 1997, pp. 311-26.
• 'Economic Dislocation and Social Discontent in the French Revolution: Survival in Paris in the Era of the Flight to Varennes', French History 10(1) 1996, pp. 30-55.
• 'Social Prejudice and Political Fears in the Policing of Paris, January-June 1791', French History 9(2) 1995, pp. 202-226.

Book Chapters

• ‘The Course of the Terror’, in A Companion to the French Revolution ed. P. McPhee, (Chichester: Wiley-Blackewell, 2012); pp.293-309. ISBN 97814443 35644. 
• ‘La violence populaire durant la Révolution française: Révolte, châtiment et escalade de la terreur d’Etat’, in Les politiques de la terreur (1793-1794) ed. M. Biard (Paris: SER/GRHis, 2008); pp. 69-80. ISBN 978 27535 06015.
• 'Popular violence in the French Revolution; revolt, retribution and the slide to state terror', in Cultures of Violence; interpersonal violence in historical perspective, ed. Stuart Carroll,(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp.175-191, ISBN 978 02300 19454
• '"Horrible Plots and Infernal Treasons": Conspiracy and the Urban Landscape in the Early Revolution', in Conspiracy and the French Revolution, ed. P. Campbell, T. Kaiser and M. Linton (Manchester: MUP, 2007) pp85-105 ISBN 978 07190 74028
• '"A ferocious and misled multitude": elite perceptions of popular action from Rousseau to Robespierre', in Enlightenment and Revolution: Essays in honour of Norman Hampson, ed. M. Crook, A. Forrest and W. Doyle (London: Ashgate, 2004) ISBN 07546 06821 pp169-86
• 'Liberty, Unanimity, and the Paradoxes of Subjectivity and Citizenship in the French Revolution', in Language and Revolution: making modern political identities, ed. I. Halfin (London: Frank Cass, 2002) ISBN 07146 53047 pp27-46
• 'Representing the Sovereign People in the Terror', in The French Experience from Republic to Monarchy, 1793-1824: new dawns in politics, knowledge and culture, ed. M.F. Cross and D. Williams (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000) ISBN 03337 72652
• 'Truth, Ethics and Imagination; Thoughts on the Purpose of History', in History and Heritage: consuming the past in contemporary culture, ed.  J. Arnold, K. Davies & S. Ditchfield (Shaftesbury: Donhead Publishing, 1998)

Other Publications

• 'Unanimity, Virtue, and the Body Politic: Melodrama and the representation of the people in the French Revolution', Lettre de la Maison Française d'Oxford, 10, Michaelmas 1998 – Hilary 1999, pp. 120-31.

Grants Received

• Leverhulme Research Fellowship, £21000
• British Academy; Overseas Conference Grant, October 2005, £500.
• British Academy; Overseas Conference Grant, March 2001.
• Scouloudi Foundation; grant for support of monograph publication, 2000.
• Humanities Research Board of the British Academy; Research Grant, £1,965, for archival research, completed summer 1999.