Biography

I joined Keele in January 2020, arriving from Oxford where I taught at Exeter College and worked in researcher training and development. My doctorate in History was also completed at Oxford. My first degrees were in History of Art, and I hold a BA from Northwestern University and a MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art.

 

Research and scholarship

I am a social and cultural historian of Britain, principally of the Long Eighteenth Century. My doctoral research examined the role of provincial fairs in England between 1750 and 1850 and positioned these events not only within more established histographies of commerce and civic identity, but also incorporated emerging approaches including spatial and temporal geographies and sensory and emotional experience. My ongoing research seeks to expand this project comparatively across Great Britain and in time from the mid-seventeenth to late-nineteenth centuries in preparation for my first monograph. I retain a strong interest in visual culture from my training as an art historian, and my research seeks to draw on a wide range of sources and disciplines.

Teaching

HIS-10026 History, Media and Memory: The Presentation of the Past in Contemporary Culture

HIS-10034 Histories of the Extraordinary and the Everyday

HIS-10039 Defining Moments in History, c. 1000-2000

HIS-20067 Sources and Debates

MA:

HIS-40016 Reflective Practice in the Humanities

 

Publications

‘Here mirth and merchandise are mix’d: buying and selling at the English provincial fair reconsidered’, History of Retailing and Consumption, 5:3 (2019)

https://doi.org/10.1080/2373518x.2019.1703326

‘The social life of books: reading together in the eighteenth-century home’, Women’s History Review (2018)

‘Resuscitating the City of the Dead: Lawrence Alma-Tadema in Pompeii, immediations, 4:2 (2017)

https://courtauld.ac.uk/research/publications/immediations/immediations-online-2/immediations-2017-volume-4-number-2/jessica-davidson

I have also written for public audiences, including for the National Trust’s Trusted Source project

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/profiles/jessica-davidson

School of Humanities
Chancellor's Building
Keele University
Staffordshire
ST5 5AA
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 733109

Head of School
Dr Nick Seager
Room: CBB1.038 (Chancellor's Building, 'B' Extension)
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 733142
Email: n.p.seager@keele.ac.uk

School and college outreach
Tel: +44 (0) 1782 734009
Email: outreach@keele.ac.uk