History

I joined Keele in September 2012, having previously taught at the University of Gloucestershire, and the University of Manchester. My research training was also at Manchester, from where I gained my MA in 2007 and PhD in 2011. This examined cultures of mountain leisure in England and Germany, 1890-1914.

I am interested in the changing fabric of European urban cultures during the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries. In particular, my research examines what happened when urban cultures emerged in rural spaces, how and why conflicts emerged amongst those involved, and what this can tell us about European urbanism more broadly. Where appropriate, I explore the benefits of applying ideas gained from cultural geography and leisure studies to questions of historical change.

I am currently working on publications, including a monograph, exploring the interactions between citizens, cities and landscapes in England and Germany in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I am also developing a new project, which will examine the Ski-resort in Western Europe in order to investigate a series of paradigms in post-war European history.

Ben Anderson, ‘A Liberal Countryside? The Manchester Ramblers’ Federation and the “Social Readjustment” of Urban Citizens’, Urban History 38:1 (2011), 84-102.

Ben M. Anderson, ‘The Construction of an Alpine Landscape: Building, Representing and Affecting the Eastern Alps, c. 1885-1914’, Journal of Cultural Geography 29:2 (2012), 155-183.

HIS10029 – Modern History.

HIS10030 – Historical Research and Writing.

HIS20067 – Sources and Debates.

HIS20075 – Right-Wing Movements in Interwar Europe.

HIS20078 – Power in the Modern World.

HIS30103 – Dissertation for History.

HIS30118 – Urban Lives in Modern Europe, 1890-1914.

HIS30119 – Urban Lives in Modern Europe, 1918-1939.