I am a historian of British, American, and global labour and social history. My first book, Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland, appears in 2016 with Liverpool University Press. I have written ten journal articles on British, American and global themes that are or soon will be in print. My main research projects have concerned the global history of the Knights of Labor, one of the great American and international labour movements of the nineteenth century, and the history of the American labour movement during the First World War.
I am currently organising, with the Trades Union Congress Library, an exhibition on the history of the relationships between the British and American trade unions from the nineteenth century until today. I have given a talk at the Radical History School, held during the Tolpuddle Festival. As a former union shop steward in New Zealand I am very keen to promote links between labour historians and the unions. I welcome any opportunity to speak on those subjects and on the ways in which labour history can help us to think about the problems that workers and unions face today.
Experience
–present
University Teacher in History, Loughborough University
2011–present
University Teacher in History, University of Nottingham
2016–2016
Associate Lecturer, Derby University
2010–2010
Seminar Tutor, University of Auckland
2007–2008
Union Delegate, Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, New Zealand
Education
2015
University of Nottingham, PhD in History
2010
University of Auckland, MA (Hons) in History
2008
University of Auckland, BA(Hons) in History, and BA in History and Economics
Publications
2016
A Nexus Between Labour Movement and Labour Movement: The Knights of Labor and the Financial Side of Global Labour History, Labor History
2016
The Justice Department Campaign Against the IWW, 1917-1920, IWW History Project (http://depts.washington.edu/iww/justice_dept.shtml)
2016
Constructing the Global History of the Knights of Labor, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas
2016
Completing the Order’s History Down Under: The Knights of Labor in Australia, Labour History
2016
Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland, Liverpool University Press
2015
Bringing the IWW Back In: Industrial Democracy and the Repression of Radicalism in the United States During the First World War, Socialist History
2015
The First-and-a-half International: The Knights of Labor and the History of International Labour Organization in the Nineteenth Century, Labour History Review
2014
Whither Industrial Democracy? The Federal Government and Organized Labour in the Telegraph Industry During the First World War, Journal of American Studies
2013
Democracies in Conflict: Union Democracy, Industrial Democracy, and Machinists in Bridgeport, Connecticut during the First World War, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations
2013
Brotherhood From a Distance: Americanization and the Internationalism of the Knights of Labor, International Review of Social History
2010
Working Men Pass Through all the Stages of Union”: The Role of District Assembly 82 of the Knights of Labor in the Formation of the American Railway Union, Australasian Journal of American Studies