Dr Michael Reeve

Professional biography

I am a historian of modern Britain, with research interests related to the social and cultural history of war, consumption, medicine, wellbeing and health, and empire. I am particularly interested in the endurance and resilience of civilians and service personnel in the context of war. This interest, in endurance and resilience among ordinary people, runs like a thread throughout my work in diverse areas of modern British and European History. 

My current research project focuses on the use of tobacco by military personnel and non-combatants in the context of modern wars involving Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the Crimean War, Second Anglo-Boer War, and the First and Second World Wars. This includes analysis and discussion of lay and expert medical discourses on smoking (mental and physical health and wellbeing), the production technologies, logistics and economics of wartime tobacco, the social and cultural histories of smoking in war contexts, and the implications of the study of wartime smoking for broader understandings of civilian and military welfare, consumption and endurance/resilience in periods of conflict and crisis. As a corollary to this research, I have also initiated a 'challenge' as part of the OU's Open Societal Challenges programme: 'The 'pernicious habit': the enduring popularity of nicotine in everyday life'. 

Recent publications (see the full list here)

Books:

Bombardment, Public Safety and Resilience in English Coastal Communities during the First World War (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
REVIEWS: Northern History; Urban History, First World War Studies.

Journal articles and book chapters:

‘Managing risk in the ‘danger zone’: Defensive infrastructure and public safety discourses on the north-east coast of England during the First World War’, Coastal Studies & Society, 1 (2-4) (2022), 180-208. Open Access.

‘‘Are we downhearted? NO!’: representing war damage and destruction following bombardment on the First World War ‘home front’’, Critical Military Studies, 7 (4) (2021), 397-417.

‘‘Something-to-smoke, at the right time, is a godsend’: voluntary action and the provision of cigarettes to soldiers during the First World War’, in Redcoats to Tommies: The Experience of the British Soldier from the Eighteenth Century, eds. Kevin Linch and Matthew Lord (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2021), 120-48.

‘‘An Empire Dock’: Place Promotion and the Local Acculturation of Imperial Discourse in ‘Britain’s Third Port’’, Northern History, 58 (1) (2021), 129-50. 

I am History discipline lead on the cross-disciplinary Level 1 module Revolutions (A113) and a member of the team for the Level 3 module Europe 1914-1989: war, peace, modernity (A327). I have also contributed learning materials to the new MA in History. I am part of the production team for a new twentieth-century Europe module, for which work is currently in progress, and for which I am Employability Lead. I am also an Associate Lecturer on the Level 1 module Discovering the arts and humanities (A111). 

Throughout 2024 I am again working with the Heugh Battery Museum in Hartlepool to curate a new exhibition and programme of events on working-class mutual aid and commemoration following the December 1914 bombardment of the town, under the title 'Remembering to Help: Hartlepool’s Practical Response to Adversity during the First World War'. This collaborative work is funded by the Society for the Study of Labour History's public engagement grants scheme. 

I have a range of other public engagement experience, including work on several television, radio and podcast productions for the likes of the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and the Western Front Association. I have also worked on heritage projects at the North of England Civic Trust (now known as Cultura Trust) and, during the 2014-18 centenary of the First World War, the Heugh Battery Museum. For more information, visit my website.

I have been a member of the committee of HistoryLab+ since 2020. HL+ is a network for Early Career Historians based at the Institute of Historical Research.

In June 2023, I joined the new Assessment Working Group at History UK to discuss trends and potential innovations in Higher Education assessment, with a view to co-producing tangible outputs for the sector.

From 2017-20, I was web editor and social media officer at the Society for the Study of Labour History (incl. membership of the Executive Committee). 

In 2017, I co-edited a special issue of the International Journal of Regional and Local History with Andrew McTominey on northern identity, history and heritage. More information here. 

I have provided manuscript peer reviews for the academic journals Urban History, First World War Studies and Home Front Studies, and have reviewed book proposals and full manuscripts for Palgrave Macmillan.

I have been awarded the following prizes for research:

• Gordon Forster Essay Prize 2020 (awarded by the Northern History journal).
• European Association for Urban History, Postgraduate Paper Prize, runner-up (bi-annual conference, Rome, 2018). 
• Beresford Award, Yorkshire History Prize 2016 (awarded by the Yorkshire Society). 

My research and professional development has been funded by grants and awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Society for the Study of Labour History, the Big Lottery Fund, the University of Louvain (Historial de la Grande Guerre), the Economic History Society, the Open University Fellowship Academy and OpenARC, the Open University Arts & Humanities Research Centre. 

I am a member of the following professional networks and learned societies:

British Society for the History of Science
Economic History Society
European Association for Urban History
Global Tobacco History Network
Interdisciplinary Tobacco History Network
International Society for First World War Studies
Military Welfare History Network
Royal Historical Society
Society for the Study of Labour History