Co-director of the Centre for Kent History and Heritage
Using a microhistory interdisciplinary approach, my research focuses on a wide range of Kent history topics from peasant and urban society, looking at 'history from below'. In addition to textual sources, I have deployed material culture and the built environment to explore such topics as gift-giving and reciprocity, piety and charity, neighbourliness, and the role and use of 'imaginative memory' in the construction of institutional identity.
Due to the rich archival sources from Canterbury and the Cinque Ports, in particular, as well as the extensive manorial sources from Christ Church Priory and archiepiscopal estates in Kent, I have published on late medieval agriculture and fishing, which were key industries in the county. I have similarly examined subjects relating to literacy and book culture, especially in Kentish urban society where these developments were especially marked, and not solely among those who were clerks.
Currently supervising postgraduate research projects on Kent-related topics