Joe Chick is a PhD student at the University of Warwick, funded by the ESRC, working on a thesis entitled ‘Conflict, Compromise, and Change: Lay–Church Relations and the Dissolution in the Monastic Town of Reading, 1350-1600’.

In his contribution to the Research Exchange, he reflects on his experience of presenting at the 2018 Social History Society conference, where he was joint runner-up in the best postgraduate paper prize for ‘Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Pursuit of Identity: Town–Abbey Relations in Late Medieval Reading’.

Dr Robert James is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth. He is the author of Popular Culture and Working-Class Taste in Britain 1930-39: A Round of Cheap Diversions? (Manchester University Press, 2010) and numerous articles on the history of leisure, cinema-going and reading.

In his contribution to the Research Exchange for Libraries Week, he reflects on the tension between education and entertainment discussed in his recent article ‘‘Read for Victory’: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War’, Cultural & Social History, vol. 15, no. 2 (2018), pp. 233-253.

Esben Bøgh Sørensen is a PhD student at Aarhus University in Denmark. His research uses the work of agricultural writers to explore the role of ideology, ideas and thought in the early emergence of capitalism in England.

Esben was joint runner-up in the prize for the best postgraduate paper at the 2018 Social History Society conference. In his contribution for the Research Exchange, he discusses the new ways an intellectual historian can read early modern farming manuals as an historical source.

Dr Jennifer Evans is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Hertfordshire. She is the author of Aphrodisiacs, Fertility and Medicine in Early Modern England (Boydell & Brewer, 2014) and numerous articles on the early modern history of gender and body. In 2014 she co-founded the Perceptions of Pregnancy research network with Dr Ciara Meehan.

In her contribution to the Research Exchange, she reflects on her new collection, co-edited with Dr Alun Withey, New Perspectives on the History of Facial Hair: Framing the Face, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018.

Alyson Brown is Professor of History at Edgehill University. She is the author of English Society and the Prison: Time, Culture and Politics in the Development of the Modern Prison, 1850-1920 (Boydell & Brewer, 2003) and numerous articles on prison history.

In her contribution to the Research Exchange, she discusses the debate around flogging prompted by a prison suicide mentioned in her recent article in the Social History Society’s journal, ‘The Sad Demise of z.D.H.38 Ernest Collins: Suicide, Informers and the Debate on the Abolition of Flogging’, Cultural & Social History, vol. 15, no.1 (2018), pp. 99-114.

Stephanie Allen is a PhD student at the University of Hertfordshire, having previously studied at Northampton and Exeter Universities. She is currently working on her doctoral thesis, which is entitled ‘Deceitful Bodies: The performance and physicality of bodily fraud in early modern England c1540-1750.’

In her contribution for the Research Exchange, she discusses the work on early modern recreated virginity which she presented at the 2018 Social History Society conference, where she won the prize for best postgraduate paper.

Dr Julie Rugg is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Housing Policy and a member of the Cemetery Research Group at the University of York. She is the author of ‘Churchyard and Cemetery: Tradition and Modernity in Rural North Yorkshire’ (Manchester University Press, 2013) as well as numerous articles, books and reports on housing and burial history and policy.

In her contribution to the Research Exchange, she reflects on how turning her attention from the history of urban to rural burial practices led her to rethink some old narratives of change over the past couple of centuries, as she explores further in her recent article ‘Consolation, Individuation and Consumption: Towards A Theory of Cyclicality in English Funerary Practice’, Cultural & Social History, vol. 15, no. 1 (2018), pp. 61-78.

Dr Kim Phillips is Associate Professor of History at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her work on medieval European societies focuses on the two themes of medieval women, gender and sexuality, and the representation of foreign lands and peoples. She is the author of ‘Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245-1510’ (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).

In her contribution for the Research Exchange, Dr Phillips reflects on the themes she explores in her latest article ‘The Breasts of Virgins: Sexual Reputation and Young Women’s Bodies in Medieval Culture and Society’, Cultural & Social History, vol. 15, no. 1 (2018), pp. 1-18.