Role
Peter Jones is a full-time research associate on the AHRC/ESRC funded project, ‘Healers, healing and the unofficial medical economy in England and Wales, 1834-1945’. His line manager is the Co-investigator on the project, Professor Steven King (also in History, Heritage and Global Cultures).
Career overview
Peter is an internationally recognised historian with specialisms in industrial, welfare and protest histories, as well as the marine historical ecology of Britain’s marine capture fisheries. He ha, in the past, worked as a full-time researcher at the universities of Birmingham, Leicester, Strathclyde, Durham and Glasgow, as well as a previous spell at Nottingham Trent.
He also has a postgraduate qualification in Information Management and Preservation (Archives) and has worked closely with many archives and archivists, including spells as an associate researcher at The National Archives at Kew, London, and National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh.
He is currently employed as a full-time researcher on the ESRC -funded project, ‘Healers, Healing and the Unofficial Medical Economy in England and Wales, 1834-1945’.
Publications
Books
- S.A. King, P. Carter, N. Carter P. Jones and C. Beardmore, In Their Own Write: Contesting the New Poor Law 1834-1900 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022)
- P. Jones and S.A. King, Pauper Voices, Public Opinion and Workhouse Reform in Mid-Victorian England – Bearing Witness (Palgrave, 2020)
Edited Volumes
- P. Jones and S.A. King (eds.), Obligation, Entitlement and Dispute Under the English Poor Laws 1600-1900 (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015)
- Chapter 1: P. Jones and S.A. King, ‘Obligation, Entitlement and Dispute: navigating the English poor laws 1600-1900’
- Chapter 3: P. Jones and S.A. King, ‘From Petition to Pauper Letter: the development of an epistolary form’
- Chapter 6: P. Jones, ‘Widows, Work and Wantonness: pauper letters and the boundaries of entitlement under the English Old Poor Law’
- P. Jones and S.A. King (eds.), Navigating the Old English Poor Law: The Kirkby Lonsdale Letters, 1809-1836 (British Academy Records of Social and Economic History series, Oxford University Press, 2020)
Book Sections
- S.A. King and P. Jones, ‘Medical Objects: the sick poor and their relief in nineteenth century England’, in J. Harley and V. Holmes (eds.), Objects of Poverty c.1700 to the Present (2025, forthcoming)
- P. Jones, S.A. King and K.N. Thompson, ‘Scraps and Samplers: the form and function of textile artefacts in the nineteenth century workhouse’, in J. Harley and V. Holmes (eds.), Objects of Poverty c.1700 to the Present (2025, forthcoming)
- P. Jones, ‘‘We Cannot See Them...They Have Gone Out of Our Reach’: narratives of change in Scotland’s great firths ca.1770-1890’, in D. Worthington (ed.), The New Coastal History: Cultural and Environmental Perspectives from Scotland and Beyond (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
- P. Jones, ‘The True Life and History of Captain Swing: rhetorical construction and metonymy in a time of reform’ in S. Poole and A. Spicer (eds.), Captain Swing Reconsidered: Forty Years of History From Below (November 2010), 101-116
Journal Articles
- T.N. Jonell, P. Jones, A. Lucas and S. Naylor, ‘Limited Waterpower Contributed to Rise of Steam Power in British “Cottonopolis”‘, PNAS Nexus, 3:7 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae251
- P. Jones, ‘How Cruel was the Victorian Workhouse?’ Modern History Review, 26:3, 2024, 24-27
- P. Jones, T.C. Jonell, M.D. Hurst, A.R. Lucas and S. Naylor, ‘Location, Location, Location: reassessing W.H.K Turner’s legacy for industrial geography in Scotland’, Scottish Geographical Journal, 1-2 (2023), 205-218
- P. Jones, ‘Looking through a Different Lens: microhistory and the workhouse experience in late nineteenth-century London’, Journal of Social History, 55:4 (2022), 925-947
- P. Jones, S.A. King and K.N. Thompson, ‘Clothing the New Poor Law Workhouse in the Nineteenth Century’, Rural History, 32 (October 2021)
- S.A. King and P. Jones ‘Fragments of Fury? Lunacy, Agency and Contestation in the Great Yarmouth Workhouse, 1890s-1900s’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 52:2(2020), 1-36
- B. Caswell, E.S. Klein, H.K. Alloway, P. Jones, et al, ‘Something Old, Something New: historical perspectives provide lessons for blue growth agendas’, Fish and Fisheries, 21:4 (2020), 774-796
- P. Jones and N. Carter, ‘Writing for Redress: redrawing the boundaries of the epistolary relationship under the New Poor Law’, Continuity and Change, 34:3 (2019), 374-399
- P. Jones, ‘The Spread of Bottom Trawling in the British Isles, c.1700-1860’, International Journal of Maritime History 30:4 (November 2018), 681-700
- P. Jones, ‘The Long ‘Lost’ History of Bottom Trawling on the Coast of South-East England ca.1350-1650’, International Journal of Maritime History, 30:2 (May 2018), 201-217
- P. Jones, ‘The New Poor Laws in Scotland, England and Wales: Comparative Perspectives’, Local Population Studies, 99:1 (2017), 31-41
- P. Jones, A. Cathcart and D.C. Speirs, ‘Early Evidence of the Impact of Preindustrial Fishing on Fish Stocks from the Mid-west and South East Coastal Fisheries of Scotland in the 19th Century’, ICES Journal of Marine Science, 73:5 (2016), 1404-1414
- P. Jones and S.A. King, ‘Voices from the Far North: pauper letters and the provision of welfare in Sutherland, 1845-1900’, Journal of British Studies, 55:1 (2016), 76-98
- P. Jones and S.A. King, ‘Testifying for the Poor: epistolary advocates and the negotiation of parochial relief in England, 1800-1834’, Journal of Social History, 49:4 (2015), 784-807
- P. Jones and M. Evans, ‘‘A Stubborn, Intractable Body’: resistance to the workhouse in Wales, 1834-77’, Family and Community History, 17:2 (2014), 101-121
- P. Jones, ‘Early Evidence of Overfishing in the Clyde: a cautionary tale’, Clyde Breakers: Firth of Clyde Forum Newsletter, 17 (2014), 10-14
- P. Jones, ‘Finding Captain Swing: protest, parish relations and the state of the public mind in 1830’, International Review of Social History, 54 (2009), 429-458
- P. Jones, ‘‘I Cannot Keep My Place Without Being Deascent’: pauper letters, parish clothing and pragmatism in the south of England, 1750-1830’, Rural History, 20:1 (2009), 31-49
- P. Jones, ‘Swing, Speenhamland and Rural Social Relations: the ‘moral economy’ of the English crowd in the nineteenth century’, Social History, 32:3 (2007), 271-290
- ‘Clothing the Poor in Early-Nineteenth-Century England’, Textile History, 37:1 (2006), 17-37
- P. Jones, ‘Digging Up the Past: Jeremy Burchardt, The Allotment Movement in England, 1793-1873’, Review Essay, History Workshop Journal, 56:1 (2003), 272-277
- P. Jones, ‘Public History Review Essay: The Tolpuddle Martyrs Museum and Related Sites’, Labour History Review, 67:2 (2002), 221-228