Dr Mark Rothery

I studied for my MA and PhD degrees at the University of Exeter between 2000 and 2005. This was followed by a postdoctoral research fellowship (The Postan Fellowship) funded by the Economic History Society. I was based at the Cambridge Group for the Study of Population and Social Structure during this year. After a few years teaching on a part-time basis I was appointed Associate Research Fellow on a British Academy small grant project and a 3-year AHRC research project, both of which were focussed on the masculine identities of landed gentry men. I was appointed postdoctoral research assistant on the project 'Consumption and the country house' here at Northampton with Professor Jon Stobart in April 2010.

Undergraduate

• Empires through history
• The history of British heritage

My interests in history from an early point in my career have focussed on changes and continuities in the British social structure. I seek to understand the basis of social and political conservatism in British society in the midst of profound political and economic change. I have developed this interest through a number of thematic angles, mainly concerned with the history of the British elite society during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including a specific focus on the English Landed Gentry. My PhD and other work examined the relationship between landed elites and the upper middle classes. My other interests include political and economic aspects of gentry life, particularly landed and agrarian pressure groups, Conservative politics and changing levels of wealth amongst gentry families during the early twentieth century. More recently I have developed an interest in the history of gender, the gender identities of gentry men, consumption and the history of the British Empire.

Other publications

Books

• The English Landed Gentry 1870-1939 (Liverpool University Press, Forthcoming, 2012)
• Co-authored with Henry French Man's Estate: Landed Gentility and Masculinities in England, 1660-1914 (Oxford University Press, Forthcoming 2011)
• Co-edited with Henry French The Formation of Elite Male Identities in England, 1660-1914: A Sourcebook (Palgrave Macmillan, Forthcoming, 2011)

Articles

• Co-authored with Henry French, 'Hegemonic Masculinities? Assessing Change and Processes of Change in Elite Masculinities, 1650-1850', in S. Brady & J. Arnold (ed.), What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World (Palgrave Macmillan, Forthcoming 2011)
• 'The Reproductive Behaviour of the English Landed Gentry 1800-1939', Journal of British Studies, vol. 48 (July 2009), pp. 674-95
• Co-Authored with Henry French, '"Upon Your Entry into the World": Masculine Values and the Threshold of Adulthood among Landed Elites in England, 1660-1800', Social History, vol. 33 (November 2008), pp. 402-22
• 'The Wealth of the English Landed Gentry, 1870-1935', Agricultural History Review, vol. 55 (June 2007), pp. 251-68
• 'The Shooting Party: The Associational Cultures of Rural and Urban Elites in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries', in R. W. Hoyle (ed.), Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports in England after 1850, (Lancaster, 2007), pp. 96-119
• 'Constructing the Scaffolding: The National Census and the English Landed Gentry Family in the Victorian Period', Family and Community History, vol. 9 (February 2006), pp. 91-109