Associate Professor in History, Durham University

Barbara specialises in social and cultural history, with a particular interest in age relations and generational change. She is currently working on a second monograph, about home-making and the life cycle, provisionally titled Age and Masculinity: At Home with Ralph Jackson 1749-1791. Her future research plans are focused on youth culture and the concept of ‘youthquakes’, and will investigate the part age relations played in the construction of identities in the British Empire c.1760-1820, with specific reference to gender, class, race, nationhood, and locality.

Barbara has also worked on public history projects, including Drama in the Dale’s community theatre production The Body on Killhope Moor.  She is currently working with Investing in Children, a Community Interest Company, on their ‘Seen and Heard’ history project; a project designed and led by young people who want to rethink the way we tell the history of  childhood in the heritage sector.

Barbara helps to convene the Life Cycles, Families & Communities strand of the Society’s annual conference.

Key Publications

• Age Relations and Cultural Change in Eighteenth-Century England (2020) (2020)
• with Adrian Green, The Economy and Culture in North-East England, 1500-1800 (2018)
• ‘Between the Broadside Ballad and the Folksong: Print and Popular Songs in Eighteenth-Century Newcastle upon Tyne’, in Music in North East England, 1500-1800 (2020)