Dr Henry Miller

Associate Professor

Department: Humanities

I joined Northumbria as Vice Chancellor's Fellow in the Department of Humanities in 2023. I was previously Associate Professor (Research) and Senior Research Fellow at Durham University, and held Lectureships in Modern British History and Nineteenth-Century British History at the University of Manchester. Prior to these posts I was a Research Fellow at the History of Parliament Trust. I completed my PhD at Queen Mary University of London.

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Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

My recent and current research revolves around the history of petitions and petitioning in modern Britain and beyond. Drawing on a Leverhulme Trust funded project (RPG-2016-097), which I jointly led, my second book, A Nation of Petitioners: Petitions and Petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918 was published in 2023 by Cambridge University Press in their Modern British Histories series. I have published articles on the social history and political culture of modern Britain in leading journals such as English Historical Review, Historical Journal, Past & Present, Journal of British Studies, History, Cultural and Social History, Historical Research, and Parliamentary History, among others. Much of my recent research has sought to address important questions within social and political science - concerning collective action, representation, and democratisation, to give just three examples - from a historical perspective.

I am currently writing up a co-authored monograph, Petitioning and People Power in Twentieth-Century Britain, in collaboration with Cristina Leston-Bandeira (Leeds), Anna Bocking-Welch (Liverpool), and Richard Huzzey (Durham), which stems from our AHRC-ESRC research project of the same name (AH/T003847/1).

My broader interest in the comparative history of petitions and petitioning was developed through my role as Principal Investigator of an AHRC Research Network on the topic (AH/R008868/1). An edited book based on the Network was published in 2024 as Petitions and Petitioning in Europe and North America: From the Late Medieval Period to the Present by Oxford University Press for the British Academy. I previously edited a special issue of Social Science History (2019) on the comparative history of petitioning in western Europe and North America in the long nineteenth century. With Miranda Johnson (Otago), I've recently co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History on the theme of petitions and petitioning in colonial and post-colonial contexts.

I have a particular interest in research impact and engagement. As Co-Investigator I currently lead the impact and knowledge exchange element of the Global Governance, Trust, and Democratic Engagement in Past and Present project, an international collaboration funded by the Trans-Atlantic Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities and led by my colleague Daniel Laqua. I was PI of a short AHRC Follow-on Funding for Impact and Engagement award, Petitioning, Citizenship, and Democratic Literacy, that involved a collaboration between Live Theatre, Northumbria, Durham University, and two local secondary schools.