Away from the Water

Peter is a social and environmental historian who has previously worked on a number of major grant-funded projects encompassing the deep history of fisheries management and marine resource use, British poverty and welfare studies (18th and 19th century), and the history of 19th century popular protest. He is a specialist in identifying and using archival sources to address many of the big questions in social and environmental history, such as how changing attitudes to poverty impacted on welfare service-users in the longue durée, and where, when and how the over-exploitation of marine fisheries began off the coasts of the United Kingdom. Most of the work Peter has done might therefore be described as ‘applied historical research’: that is, drawing lessons from history to better inform how we approach key social and environmental questions for the future. Peter was involved in this Leverhulme Project from 2021 to end 2023.