Faculty Member, History
Professor of Eighteenth-century History
About
Tim Hitchcock has spent the last twenty years helping to create a 'new history from below' which puts the experiences and agency of the poor and of working people at the heart of our understanding of the history of eighteenth-century Britain. He has authored or edited ten books on the histories of poverty, gender and sexuality. With Professor Robert Shoemaker of the University of Sheffield and Professor Clive Emsley at the Open University (in collaboration with the Humanities Research Institute at Sheffield, and the Higher Education Digitisation Service at Hertfordshire) he has also created an on-line and entirely searchable edition of the Old Bailey Sessions Proceedings, 1674 to 1913 (www.oldbaileyonline.org). This comprises some 120,000,000 words of text, and represents the largest body of published material detailing the lives of non-elite people ever produced. This project was made possible by major grants awarded by the New Opportunities Fund and the Arts and Humanities Research Board.
In collaboration with Robert Shoemaker he has been awarded £803,000 by the ESRC to create a digital edition of a wide range of manuscript materials relating to the social policy provision in eighteenth-century London. This project, Plebeian Lives and the Making of Modern London, will allow Tim Hitchcock and Professor Shoemaker to create a new model of the inter-relationship between the demands of the poor and the users of social policy, and the evolution of modern institutions.
Tim Hitchcock sits on the executive committee of the Royal Historical Society; on the AHRC's post-graduate panel 2 (history); and on its Knowledge Transfer Panel.
Contact Information
http://historyonics.blogspot.com/
