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Dr Vincent Trott

Profile summary

Professional biography

I joined the OU History Department in 2017 and became Senior Lecturer in History in 2023. I was previously a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, where I taught publishing and book history. I completed a collaborative doctoral degree, sponsored by the Open University and the British Library, in 2014. Before that, I studied for an MA in History at Queen Mary University of London, and I completed a BA in History at the University of Manchester. I have also worked in the museum sector, spending six years working part-time at the Museum of London.

Research interests

My research interests address modern British and American history, with a particular focus on the First World War; the history of publishing and print culture; propaganda; cultural memory; and the history of humour. My first book, Publishers, Readers and the Great War (Bloomsbury, 2017), discusses how the publishing industry shaped the popular memory of the First World War in Britain between 1918 and 2014. 

I am currently working on a new project exploring humour, propaganda and political satire in the United States during the First World War. This research examines how a range of cultural products – including satirical magazines, editorial cartoons, popular songs, and silent films –exploited humour for propagandistic purposes between 1914 and 1918. 

Publications

Book:

Journal Articles:

Chapters:

Book Reviews:

Teaching interests

I have produced teaching materials on a wide range of different topics in modern history. I am currently co-chairing the production of a new module, Twentieth Century Europe: A Global History, which will launch in 2026. Between 2021 and 2023, I was a member of the module production team for Empires: Power, Resistance, Legacies (A328), for which I wrote a unit on imperial lives and careers.

I also helped to produce our Level 1 module Revolutions (A113), for which I authored two units, one addressing the revolutionary consequences of the First World War (co-authored with Dr Robin Mackie), and another exploring the USA in the long 1960s. Before this, I authored the unit 'Urbanisation, degeneration and understandings of the big city' for the module The British Isles and the Modern World, 1789-1914 (A225).

I was previously the Module Team Chair for The Making of Welsh History (A329) and deputy chair for Europe 1914-1989: war, peace, modernity (A327).

Impact and engagement

I am currently helping to write a CPD course on the First World War for secondary school history teachers. I am also the author of the FutureLearn course 'World War 1: Trauma and Memory', and in 2014 I helped to curate the British Library exhibition 'Enduring War: Grief, Grit and Humour'.

I have written articles on the First World War for a range of online publications:

 

 

External collaborations

I currently manage SHARP-L, the listserv for the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. I previously worked as the society's Recording Secretary (2019–2023) and Executive Assistant (2015–2019).

Publications

[Book Review] A history of American literature and culture of the First World War (2023)
Trott, Vincent
First World War Studies, 14(1) (pp. 213-215)


Humour, Neutrality and Preparedness: American Satirical Magazines and the First World War, 1914-1917 (2020-11-26)
Trott, Vincent
War in History, 29(1) (pp. 104-136)


[Book Review] Words and the First World War: language, memory, vocabulary, by Julian Walker (2019)
Trott, Vincent
First World War Studies, 10(1) (pp. 160-161)


Introduction (2018-11-17)
Davis, Caroline and Trott, Vincent
Logos, 29(2-3) (pp. 6-8)


Remembering War, Resisting Myth: Veteran Autobiographies and the Great War in the Twenty-first Century (2013)
Trott, Vincent Andrew
Journal of War & Culture Studies, 6(4) (pp. 328-342)


Publishers, Readers and the Great War: Literature and Memory since 1918 (2017-10-05)
Trott, Vincent
ISBN : 9781474291477 | Publisher : Bloomsbury Academic


Battles (2023)
Trott, V.
In: Demoor, M.; Van Dijck, C. and Van Puymbroeck, B. eds. Edinburgh Companion To First World War Periodicals. Edinburgh Companions to Literature and the Humanities (pp. 227-243)
ISBN : 9781474494717 | Publisher : Edinburgh University Press | Published : Edinburgh


The Poetic Marketplace (2022)
Trott, Vincent
In: Potter, Jane ed. A History of World War One Poetry (pp. 19-34)
ISBN : 9781009100649 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge


"The market is flooded with them": Richard Aldington's Death of a Hero and the War Books Boom (2016-06)
Trott, Vincent
In: Wilson, Nicola ed. The Book World: Selling and Distributing British Literature, 1900 - 1940 (95 -116)
ISBN : 9789004315860 | Publisher : Brill | Published : Leiden