Notes on contributors

Peter Collinge is a researcher and writer. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher on the AHRC-funded project ‘Small Bills and Petty Finance: Co-creating the History of the Old Poor Law’. He was awarded his PhD on businesswomen in Georgian Derbyshire from Keele University in 2015. He teaches at Keele University. His research interests span public history; the Old Poor Law; businesses and their networks; and health, leisure and tourism in the long eighteenth century. His published work includes articles in Business History, Epoch, The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Midland History and Northern History.

Louise Falcini is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex and a member of the Sussex Humanities Lab. Her research focuses on the poor and marginalized in the long eighteenth century. She completed her AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Reading in 2018, examining cleanliness and the poor in eighteenth-century London. She has subsequently published on vagrancy and migration, including a large collaborative dataset. Her broader research interests include the technologies and infrastructure of co-production and how these can be made simple, cheap and accessible.

Tim Hitchcock is Professor of Digital History at the University of Sussex, and from 2014 to 2021 served as co-director, and latterly director, of the Sussex Humanities Lab. He has published widely on the histories of poverty, gender and sexuality, focusing primarily on eighteenth-century London. With Professor Robert Shoemaker and others, he has also created a series of websites that give direct public access to primary sources evidencing the history of Britain and underpinning the evolution of a ‘new history from below’. These sites include The Proceedings of the Old Bailey <https://www.oldbaileyonline.org>; London Lives, 1690 to 1800 <https://www.londonlives.org>; Locating London’s Past <https://www.locatinglondon.org>; Connected Histories <https://www.connectedhistories.org>; and Digital Panopticon: The Global Impact of London Punishments, 1780–1925 <https://www.digitalpanopticon.org>.

Samantha A. Shave is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Lincoln. Their research is concerned with the development and impact of poor relief policies and practices under the Old and New Poor Law. Their published work includes a monograph, Pauper Policies: Poor Law Practice in England, 1780–1850 (Manchester, 2017), and journal papers in Rural History, The Historical Journal, Continuity and Change and The Agricultural History Review. Samantha is a regular expert consultant for popular radio, TV and print media and, in 2018, a guest on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time on the Poor Laws.

Elizabeth Spencer is Lecturer in Eighteenth Century and Public History at the University of York. She was awarded her WRoCAH-funded PhD from the University of York in 2018 with a thesis that explored the description of women’s clothing across the long eighteenth century, and has since published on the topic. Her article ‘“None but Abigails appeared in white aprons”: the apron as an elite garment in eighteenth-century England’ was awarded the Textile History prize for 2018. Elizabeth’s current research focuses on women and accounting in England between 1680 and 1830, and she has broader research interests in gender, consumption and material culture across the early modern period.

Alannah Tomkins is Professor of Social History at Keele University. Her research has focused on the history of the English Poor Law and the social history of medicine, her most recent book being Medical Misadventure in an Age of Professionalisation, 1780–1890 (Manchester, 2017). She was the principal investigator on the AHRC-funded project ‘Small Bills and Petty Finance’. Her forthcoming work is related to the history of nursing before 1820.

The Interludes in Providing for the Poor have been produced by volunteer researchers on the AHRC-funded project ‘Small Bills and Petty Finance’: William Bundred and Margaret Dean in Cumbria; Elizabeth Hughes and Jean Irvin in East Sussex; and Janet Kisz and Dianne Shenton in Staffordshire.