Faculty:Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
School:Humanities and Social Sciences
Location: Cambridge
Areas of Expertise: History
Research Supervision:Yes
Courses taught: History
Joseph Harley teaches early modern British and European history. He is an expert on early modern, Georgian and Victorian poverty and researches the topic through myriad approaches including consumption, welfare, material culture and social relations.
Email: joseph.harley@aru.ac.uk
Before joining Anglia Ruskin in 2021, Joseph was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Derby. Between 2016 and 2017, he held an Economic History Society fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research, where he researched life in the English workhouse during the long eighteenth century. He has extensive teaching experience having worked at a range of UK universities such as the University of Leicester, Derby and Loughborough and a number of secondary schools. He is currently Editorial Assistant to Urban History (2014-) and was formerly employed as a researcher on two Heritage Lottery Fund projects.
Joseph is an expert in the history of poverty and consumption over the early modern , Georgian and Victorian periods. He has published a number of articles on these themes and one book. He is currently editing a book on the working-class at home over the long nineteenth century and writing a monograph for Manchester University press entitled At Home with the Poor: Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in England, c. 1650-1850. His work helps to address a major historiographical gap, in which the poor and their consumer behaviour and material culture has largely been neglected. The work shows that poverty did not necessarily equate to owning very little and taking no pride in living spaces. Rather, most of the poor had an emotional attachment to their homes and strove to improve their domestic spheres by making them more comfortable, convenient and respectable through new consumer goods.
Joseph welcomes inquiries for PhD supervision on any aspect of the history of Britain between c. 1600 and 1900. He is particularly interested in supervising students interested in any of the broad themes in the list above.
Joseph teaches on the following modules:
Norfolk Pauper Inventories, c. 1690-1834 (Oxford: British Academy/Oxford University Press, 2020).
'Domestic Production and Consumption in Poor English Households, 1670-1840', Agricultural History Review. Forthcoming in 69:1 (2021).
'Pauper Inventories, Social Relations and the Nature of Poor Relief under the Old Poor Law, England c. 1601-1834', Historical Journal, 62:2 (2019), pp. 375-398.
'Consumption and Poverty in the Homes of the English Poor, c. 1670-1834', Social History, 43:1 (2018), pp. 81-104.
'Material Lives of the Poor and their Strategic use of the Workhouse during the Final Decades of the English Old Poor Law', Continuity and Change, 30:1 (2015), pp. 71-103.
'Consumption and Material Culture of Poverty in Early-Modern Europe, c. 1450-1800', in David Hitchcock and Julia McClure (eds.), The Routledge History of Poverty, 1450-1800 (London: Routledge, 2021), pp. 185-205.
At Home with the Poor: Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in England, c. 1650-1850 (Manchester University Press). Under contract.
The Working Class at Home, 1770-1940 (with Vicky Holmes and Laika Nevalainen) (Palgrave). Under contract.
'"I can barely provide the common necessaries of life": Material wealth over the life-cycle of the English poor, 1790-1834', in Joseph Harley, Vicky Holmes and Laika Nevalainen (eds.), The Working Class at Home, 1770-1940 (Palgrave).
'Introduction' (with Vicky Holmes), in Joseph Harley, Vicky Holmes and Laika Nevalainen (eds.), The Working Class at Home, 1770-1940 (Palgrave).
2021 '(Dis)comforts of the hearth in poor English households, c. 1650-1850', British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, St Hugh's College, University of Oxford.
2020 'Consumer behaviour and material lives of the poor in the town and country: A comparison, c.1670-1834', Pre-Modern Towns Conference, Birkbeck, University of London.
2020 'Material poverty or wealth? Pauper consumer behaviour during the 'crisis' years of the old poor law, c. 1780-1834', Economic and Social History of the Early Modern World Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
2019 'Pauper inventories and domestic production, c.1670-1834', Domestic Production and Work in Poor British Homes, c. 1650-1850, University of Derby
2019 'Small things in the English pauper home, c.1670-1834', Small Things in the Eighteenth Century conference, University of York.
2019 '"His cottage was his happy home": Industriousness and domestic production in poor English homes, 1670-1830', University of Lincoln History Research Seminar.
2019 'Production in the homes of the English poor, 1670-1830', University of Derby ICR seminar.
2019 'Domestic work and pauperism in England, c.1670-1834', British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, St Hugh's College, University of Oxford.
2018 'The origins and uses of parish-related inventories in the long 18th century'. Keele University.
2018 'Pauper Inventories and the Nature of Poor Relief in England, c.1670-1834', British History in the Long 18th Century, Institute of Historical Research, SAS, University of London.
'Who Do You Think You Are?', BBC, Advisor to historical researchers.
Joseph welcomes media enquiries relating to his research expertise.