Professor Tracey Loughran

Biography

Whether we realise it or not, history is part of our everyday lives. We try to understand ourselves by thinking about our personal pasts, our families, and where we grew up, as well as what we are doing now. We can better understand the world around us by learning about the pasts of our societies and cultures. For me, this means trying to understand why some people hold power and others do not, and the factors that influence people's abilities to take action. These factors include our feelings and self-perceptions, and the ideas we have about our place in the world. As a historian, then, I am interested in what past people thought and felt, how they saw the world, and how these thoughts, feelings, and ideas affected their capacity to change the world around them. In practice, this means I am interested in a lot of things. My research mainly explores experiences of gender, body, and selfhood in twentieth-century Britain. I am currently finishing a major project on women's experiences of 'everyday health' in Britain from 1960-1990 (Wellcome Trust funded, 2017-2022). This project generated over ninety oral history interviews that will be archived at the British Library. The findings will be published in a monograph co-authored with Kate Mahoney and Daisy Payling (2025). Daisy, Kate, and I also co-created a toolkit that uses historical sources to empower young people to take control of their wellbeing, with accompanying activity guides and curriculum links - this can be downloaded from the Body, Self, and Family website. I am also working on three other publications: an edited collection on imagination in historical research (with Mark Williams); an Oxford Handbook of the History of Age and Aging (with David Doddington); and the second edition of my edited collection A Practical Guide to Studying History (Bloomsbury, 2017), which helps students make the transition from further education to studying history at university . I enjoy working collaboratively. Building research relationships, learning from other scholars, and working out how we can support each other is central to my practice as a historian and my sense of self. Over the course of my career, I've spent a lot of time running workshops and conferences, setting up research clusters and networks, designing and convening team-taught modules and interdisciplinary degree programmes, and (less excitingly) sitting on committees. Some of these activities added tangible items to my CV, but a lot were simply about trying something new, expressing and satisfying curiosity, and finding out about other people's research and ways of doing things. My proudest achievement is probably co-founding and leading, with Phil Ward, the Eastern ARC Mentoring Scheme. This programme partners mentors and mentees across three institutions. It is non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, and depends entirely on the goodwill, openness, and willingness of everyone involved to share their knowledge and experience. The scheme couldn't exist without people who believe in our ability to learn from each other, and who are willing to give their time and energy to make things better for other people - every year that it runs, I'm reminded that no matter what is going on in the headlines, there are a still lot of good people in the world.

Qualifications

• 2006: PhD in History: 'Shell-Shock in First World War Britain: An Intellectual and Medical History, c. 1860-1920'. Queen Mary, University of London.

• 2002: MA in Intellectual and Cultural History, Queen Mary, University of London.

• 2001: BA (Hons), History, Queen Mary, University of London.

Appointments

University of Essex

• Professor of History, History, University of Essex (1/10/2019 - present)

• Director of the Centre for Public and Policy Engagement, University of Essex (1/8/2024 - present)

Other academic

• Professor in History, History, University of Essex (1/10/2019 - present)

• Reader in History, History, University of Essex (17/7/2017 - 30/9/2019)

• Senior Lecturer, History, Cardiff University (1/9/2014 - 16/7/2017)

• Lecturer, History, Cardiff University (1/9/2008 - 31/8/2014)