Industrial
Revolution
Revisioned
The Industrial Revolution was about more than inventions. Instead of individual machines conceived by heroic inventors, it was a story of systems and networks — the worlds that got the machines running, and the ways the world changed to make the devices work. Canals and railways, mills and engine houses, slave plantations and guild prerogatives, consumer markets and global geopolitics: all played a role. The relationship between changing machines and their changing contexts is what my research investigates.
My research has always been rooted in the physical. The mills, canals, engine houses and infrastructure of Northern England and Scotland are not backdrop to the history — they are the history. To understand the Industrial Revolution is to stand in these places, to read what brick and iron and water have to say.
Ironbrick Arts is where my research meets art. I photograph the physical remains of industrialisation. I paint and draw what I find. The camera and the brush ask different questions of the same subjects, and both matter. I also produce heritage events that bring the history of the Industrial Revolution to new audiences — in museums, galleries, historic sites and public spaces across the North.
We live in the past. Its physical remains.
Publications
Technology in the Industrial Revolution. Cambridge University Press.
Cambridge University Press, 2020.
"Lucidly and elegantly shows that multiple contexts — local, regional and global — shaped the development of technology in Britain. A perfect text for undergraduates." — Prasannan Parthasarathi, Boston College
"By emphasising networks and systems rather than men and machines, she forces us to see the world of the Industrial Revolution anew." — Peter A. Coclanis, University of North Carolina
"A masterful account of peoples, machines, productions, consumptions, cultures, and the state, weaving together very local, very global, traditional, revisionist, and contested stories. We are lucky to have this book." — Heidi Voskuhl, University of Pennsylvania
"Expansive… edifying… develops a highly nuanced view that encompasses innovation, politics, economics, and the transnational context." — B.C. Odom, Choice
For my other publications in the history of technology, agriculture, finance, and manufacturing, see my Publications page.