The Team

Steve Poole is professor of History and Heritage at UWE, Bristol and Director of the University’s Regional History Centre. He has published widely on histories of popular protest, criminality, public disorder and radical politics in the Hanoverian era. His most recent book (with Nick Rogers) is Bristol from Below:  Law, Authority and Protest in a Georgian City (2017). 

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Links: UWE page.

John Drury is Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Sussex. His research focuses on collective behaviour – in protests, riots and social movements; emergencies; and less dramatic crowd phenomena such as at festivals, music and sports events. Some of the crowd events and social movement phenomena he has researched include the 1990 poll tax riot, No M11 Link Road Campaign, and the 2011 English riots. He is currently researching collective responses to hostile threats (marauding terrorist attacks) and how Covid-19 mutual aid groups can be sustained. He teaches crowd psychology to the UK Fire and Rescue Service and to crowd safety managers around the world. His findings on collective resilience in mass emergencies has informed the training of over 2000 crowd safety managers and stewards across the UK and European football clubs and informs the Civil Contingencies Secretariat’s National Risk Assessments. He is a former editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology and current Director of Research in the School of Psychology.

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Links: University of Sussex page.

Roger Ball is a Research Fellow at the University of the West of England. His academic research has primarily focused on post-war urban rioting in the UK. After more than twenty years working as an aerospace engineer, he received a PhD in History in 2012 with a thesis focusing on urban disorder in the 1980s. From 2016-2019, Roger collaborated with social psychologists from Keele, Sussex and St Andrews Universities in researching the anatomy and dynamics of the urban riots of August 2011 in England as part of the ESRC funded project Beyond Contagion. He subsequently worked at Sussex University on a British Academy funded study of British abolitionist organisations and colonial policy in relation to the death penalty. Outside of the academy Roger has been involved in a series of community history projects and published several books focused on local history in Bristol. These include studies of labour movements, the Victorian workhouse and most recently the co-authored From Wulfstan to Colston(2020) considering the history of slavery, abolition and memorialisation in the city. He is currently editing and contributing to a forthcoming collection of essays documenting resistance to World War One in Bristol.  

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Jane Askew has worked at the University of the West of England (UWE) in several Senior Research Administrator roles since 1996 supporting postgraduate students and academics during that time. She resigned from her last post, Project Co-ordinator (bidding for grants and post award support for externally funded projects) in the UWE Research Business and Innovation Grant and Award Hub to join the riot 1831 project. Jane hopes to combine her admin skills, research experience and enthusiasm for history and apply them to the project whilst dabbling with semi-retirement.

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Jo Fox began her career at Durham University as a lecturer in Modern European History. She became Durham History Department’s first female professor in 2010 and its first female Head of Department in 2016. She was appointed as the first female Director of the Institute of Historical Research at the School of Advanced Study in 2017. She is currently Dean of the School of Advanced Study and Pro Vice Chancellor (Research and Public Engagement), University of London. Jo is a specialist in the history of propaganda, rumour and disinformation. She is the author of two major monographs, and has published widely in leading journals.  She is currently co-investigator on a Leverhulme project on ‘The Political Warfare Executive, Covert Propaganda and British Culture’ and Principal Investigator on an AHRC COVID-19 rapid response project on ‘COVID-19 rumours in historical context. Jo is a regular commentator on historical and contemporary disinformation campaigns (‘fake news’), most recently appearing at the Körber Stiftung History Forum in May 2019.  She regularly assists museums and archives in their public programmes and exhibitions. Jo has previously served as the Honorary Communications Director of the Royal Historical Society. She is a National Teaching Fellow (2007), a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS), and a Fellow of the Royal Society for Manufactures and the Arts (FRSA). Since 2019, she has served as Chair of the Humanities and Social Science Early Research Awards panels at the Wellcome Trust.

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Katrina Navickas is Reader in History at the University of Hertfordshire. She is author of Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 1789-1848 (Manchester University Press, 2015) and Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798-1815 (Oxford University Press, 2009), and many articles on the history of popular protest and the democratic radical movement in early 19th century England. She was awarded a British Academy mid-career fellowship in 2018 to research her third monograph on the history of contested public space in England. She has extensive public engagement experience, most recently with the Peterloo bicentenary commemorations in Manchester in 2019 and the Kennington Chartist project in south London in 2019.

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Links: University of Hertfordshire page.

Based in Bristol, Iona is an interpretation professional with nearly 20 years’ experience in the heritage sector. Her career began at Acoustiguide Ltd, where she spent several years running the creative department producing award-winning audio and multimedia guides, podcasts and apps for museums and heritage sites across the UK and Europe. She then went on to manage the Interpretation team at The British Museum, devising and delivering world-class interpretation across the museum’s temporary exhibitions and permanent galleries. In this role, she was responsible for the in-depth research that informed the visitor experience, enabling the museum to continually improve engagement with its diverse audiences. Since leaving the British Museum, Iona has worked on a wide range of projects as an Interpretation Consultant, most recently for English Heritage, the National Trust, the Science Museum and the National Gallery. Iona regularly talks at conferences and seminars and gives ‘History in Practice’ lectures to students at the University of the West of England. She is a trustee of the South West Federation of Museums and Art Galleries, and a critical friend to the Association for Heritage Interpretation.

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Links: LinkedIn.

Paul Hudson is the Learning & Outreach Manager for Worcestershire Archive & Archaeology Service, leading a team developing heritage-based events and activities based on our collections and services. A local studies librarian by background, he’s worked in Essex and Derby before moving to Worcestershire 16 years ago to become Head of Worcestershire History Centre, part for the record Office, which now is combined with the Archaeology Service. He is keen to help people access the amazing resources held, and support individual and groups with their projects – including talks, guided walks, oral history projects, community archaeology, film screenings, family craft sessions, school workshops and many others. He has developed the service’s social media, using that, alongside traditional media, to promote the amazing stories from the collections and take them to wide audiences. He has been on the national committee of the Cilip Local Studies Group for many years.

email: PHudson2@worcestershire/gov.uk
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Richard Meunier, Principal Archivist, manages the archives and local studies service for Bath & North East Somerset Council Bath Record Office. They look after and make accessible records which document the historic City of Bath and its surrounding area dating back to the 12^th century. Before moving to Bath, Richard was the Archivist and Curator for Barts Medical School and its affiliated NHS Trust and prior to that the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Richard’s professional interest is in the history of medicine and he has lectured in the subject as an Honorary Lecturer for the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. Richard is always keen to work collaboratively through partnerships and networks to widen accessibility and engage new audiences in history and research.

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Links: Bath Archives page.

Oliver Blackmore began his professional career as a field archaeologist before embarking on a career in museums. His first museum job was Assistant Curator of Antiquities at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. Oliver then moved to Newport Museum and Art Gallery, first as Curator of Archaeology and then later, Museum Curator. Oliver is currently Collections and Engagement Officer, which includes responsibility for Newport Museum’s nationally significant Chartism collection.

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Links: Newport Museum Art Gallery and Peoples Collection Wales

Esther is the Archives Engagement Manager for Somerset Archives and Local Studies with the South West Heritage Trust. She originally joined the team at the Somerset Record Office in 2003, having recently qualified as an archivist. Esther had previously studied Classical Civilisation at the University of Warwick, spent a year working with Barnado’s in Falkirk, then returned to her home city of York where she worked at the University of York’s Borthwick Institute as an archive assistant. Esther has always had a keen interest in using archives for education and learning, and has created and delivered a range of courses including palaeography, family, house and local history, and workshops for schools, colleges and universities. The purpose-built Somerset Heritage Centre opened in 2010, and the South West Heritage Trust was founded in 2014 as an independent charity for Somerset, Devon and the South West, to celebrate and protect the rich heritage of the area, helping everyone to enjoy it now and in the future. Further information on the South West Heritage Trust can be found at https://swheritage.org.uk/

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Anne Brown is the Learning Manager at Shire Hall Historic Courthouse Museum in Dorset, where she is responsible for the planning, delivery and evaluation of the lifelong learning programmes, talks and tours. Shire Hall was the main court of Dorset from 1797 to 1955, and retains its original Georgian cells and courtroom. Famous as the scene of the trial of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1834, countless working people also found themselves in the dock facing judge and jury. Opened as a new museum on May 1^st 2018, visitors to Shire Hall walk in the footsteps of these people, uncovering their stories and their connections to this significant building. Anne has a degree in Psychology and Education and worked in residential social work before gaining a teaching qualification. She taught in adult and community learning, including school family learning programmes, before entering the world of heritage where she has worked in museum and archive learning services for over 17 years.

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Head of Collections & Archives, Bristol City Council’s Culture & Creative Industries Team, Ray is responsible for the museum and archive staff who work directly with collections including curators, archivists and conservators along with the team who work closely with local schools to facilitate their use of the sites and collections.  A graduate of the University of Bristol, Ray’s original background is as a natural history curator and he remains active in this field.  A member of the management team that led the development of M Shed (opened in 2011), more recent activity has included developing plans for a proposed collections resource centre and managing the team’s involvement around the future of the statue of Colston, toppled in the city in June 2020.

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Satsymph is a three-man artists’ partnership who create ‘located audio’ or ‘mobile immersive media’ soundart: multi-dimensional augmented soundworlds layered over actual physical locations encompassing re-imagined histories, contemporary classical music and contemporary poetry fusions accessed through that nowadays ubiquitous device, the smartphone. The participant moves within these augmented sound environments with one foot – or ear! – in ‘the real world’. What they hear is determined by their actions as well as environmental feedback: speed of movement through the soundscape, orientation , whether the device is held up- or downwards, the time of day, the season, etc. The medium presents a new paradigm for art created to be accessible in non-traditional (and thus non-exclusive) cultural spaces, allowing nuanced, individual experiences.  Satsymph’s members are Marc Yeats, classical contemporary composer; Ralph Hoyte, writer, poet; Phill Phelps, coder, audio-engineer and musician. Projects include ‘1831 Riot! The ReMake’ (UWE Regional History Centre; Calvium), setting the 1831 Bristol Reform Riots on Queen Square/Bristol; ‘Frome Walking Memories’ (Black Swan Arts/Frome/Somerset), setting oral histories of Frome’s industrial heritage; and ‘The Temple of Hermes’ (BCP-Council, created for Hamworthy Park, Poole, Dorset), a contemporary classical music/poetry fusionscape.

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Links: Satsymph, Marc Yeats, Ralph Hoyte, Phill Phelps