PhD Project: Short lived newspapers
My current PhD work focusses on short-lived nineteenth-century newspapers and periodicals, aiming to reassess conventional ideas of success and failure in the nineteenth-century press. Working with the British Library’s newspaper collections and combining data analysis approaches with detailed case studies, I seek to challenge orthodox views of ‘success’ that have been associated primarily with long-running, London-centred newspapers. I argue that, collectively, short-lived newspapers represent a substantial proportion of the papers in print throughout the century and are therefore a critically-overlooked segment of the press as experienced by contemporary readers. I explore how the nineteenth century’s fundamental instability was reflected in its newspapers, which appeared, adapted, merged and disappeared in bewildering numbers. Dismissing substantial numbers of shorter-lived papers as de facto failures places historical scholarship in danger of misrepresenting the complexity of the press experienced by nineteenth-century readers.
Conferences and Papers Presented
I have presented at…
2024 Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference, University of Stirling (coming soon). Title of paper: ‘An ill wind from the west: The role of America in the fate of the Illustrated news of the world, 1858-1863′.
2023 ESPRit (European Society for Periodicals Research) conference. Title of Paper: ‘Scanning the horizon: What can a distance-reading methodology reveal about the motivations for founding newspapers in the nineteenth century?’
2022 Research Society for Victorian Periodicals conference. Title of Paper: ‘Only the ephemeral is of lasting value: How short-lived newspapers offer new perspectives on the history of the nineteenth-century press’.
Prizes and Publications
1) ‘The Long and Short of it: rethinking the longevity of nineteenth-century periodicals’ – winner of the 2023 VanArdsel Prize, Research Society for Victorian Periodicals.
Publication due in Spring/Summer 2024 edition of Victorian Periodicals Review