Profile
Dr Elin Jones
Lecturer in Maritime History
I am a social historian of the maritime world, c. 1750 - 1850. My research has examined shipboard society, and how built and natural environments shaped the lives of those who went to sea during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
My doctoral work focused on maritime labour, skill, work and masculinity on Royal Naval ships during this period, exploring how the ship was understood by its socially and culturally variegated population. I am currently preparing a monograph based on this research titled 'Naval Masculinity and Shipboard Society, 1756 - 1815'.
My new project explores the transition from sail to steam at sea, examining the changing relationship between technology, labour and understandings of the natural world during the first half of the nineteenth century.
I am a member of the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies at Exeter.
Research interests
My research interests lie within the fields of social, environmental and maritime history, as well as the histories of labour, technology and technological change. I am interested in how studying maritime history can elucidate connections as well as divisions, and in how modern identities were formed through imagined and physical relationships with the sea.
External impact and engagement
My doctoral research was conducted in partnership with the National Maritime Museum. Since completing my PhD in 2016, I have worked across various forms of public history with heritage organisations and museums, as well as on arts and history television programming. I was employed at University of Edinburgh as the public history co-ordinator of a Heritage Lottery Funded project on geographies of social housing, and have worked in research and production for BBC 1 and BBC 2 arts and history programming.
I am currently working with History & Policy and Lloyd's Register, developing a series of reports which reflect on risk and techological change at sea.
Modules taught
- HIH1420 - Understanding the Modern World
- HIH2001 - Doing History: Perspectives on Sources
- HIH2002 - Uses of the Past
- HIH2234 - Sailors, Slavery and Piracy: The Atlantic World, 1600 - 1800
- HIH3005 - General Third-Year Dissertation
- HIH3042 - Britain and the Age of Revolution, 1775-1832 (Sources)
- HIH3043 - Britain and the Age of Revolution, 1775-1832 (Context)
- HISM002 - Critical Approaches to Maritime and Naval History
- HISM038 - Navy and Nation: The Royal Navy in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1688-1815