Faculty of History: Academic Staff: Further Details: Dr Leigh shaw-Tayor

Dr Leigh Shaw-Taylor

Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure
Cambridge

Tel: (+44) (0)1223 333190
lmws2@cam.ac.uk

I am a university lecturer in eighteenth and nineteenth century British economic and social history. I am also deputy-director of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure and manage the website of the Economic History Society

Research Interests

My research interests are in long-run social and economic developments in England between the mid sixteenth and late nineteenth centuries with a particular focus on the development of agrarian capitalism and the Industrial Revolution.

I am director of an ongoing program of research: The occupational structure of Britain c.1379-1911. This has been generously funded by the ESRC and is now a British Academy research project. The project is a collaboration with Professor E.A. Wrigley and others, aimed at improving our understanding of the long run process of economic development, which culminated in the Industrial revolution, through a quantitative reconstruction of the occupational structure of the economy over as long a period as the sources will allow. The project is based in the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure.

In conjunction with Professor Osamu Saito of Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo I am co-ordinating a network of historians working on the International Comparative History of Occupational Structure (INCHOS). I am also involved in a project, co-ordinated by Professor Jan Luiten van Zanden of Utrecht University (Clio-Infra), to create a digital data infrastructure for European economic history. My role relates to the creation of pan-European datasets on population levels and occupational statistics

Teaching

I lecture for two part I papers, paper 10, British economic and social history 1700-1914 and paper 9: British economic and social history c.1500-1700. I also supervise part II dissertations on British economic and social history 1600-1900. My research project on occupational structure provides a range of opportunities for undergraduates both to make use of existing large-scale datasets and to undertake archival research and I would particularly welcome enquiries in this area. Some successful dissertations can be found online at http://www.hpss.geog.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/occupations/abstracts/ With Dr Sara Horrel (Economics) I teach an advanced paper on British Industrialization for the M.Phil in economic and Social History. I am one of the convenors for the research seminar in early modern economic and social history and the research seminar in quantitative history.

Areas of Research Supervision

I would welcome enquiries from prospective students in most fields of British economic and social history c.1600-1900 but would be especially keen to supervise graduate students who wish to undertake work relating to my large research project on The Occupational Structure of Britain c.1379-1911. I am currently supervising research students working on: the development of agrarian capitalism and the growth of large farms; patents and the institutional pre-conditions for British Industrialization; and the history of urban back gardens in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Selected Publications

'Diverse experiences: the geography of female employment and the 1851 census' in N. Goose (ed.) Women's work in industrial England: regional and local perspectives (2007), pp. 51-75.

'Family farms and capitalist farms in mid-nineteenth century England', Agricultural History Review, 53, II (2005), pp. 158-191.

'Access to land in eighteenth century England' in B.J.P. van Bavel, and P.C.M. Hoppenbrouwers (eds.), Land holding and land transfer in North-West Europe: Late middle ages to C19th (2004), C.O.R.N. Publication No. 9, Brepols, pp. 265-281.

WITH M. De Moor and P. Warde (eds.) The management of common land in north west Europe (2002), C.O.R.N. Publication No. 8, Brepols.

'The management of common land in the lowlands of southern England, c.1500 - c. 1850' (2002) in ibid.

'Parliamentary enclosure and the emergence of an English agricultural proletariat', Journal of Economic History, 61 (2001), pp.640-62.

'Labourers, cows, common rights and parliamentary enclosure: The evidence of contemporary comment c. 1760 - 1810', Past and Present,171 (2001) pp. 95-126.

WITH E.A. Wrigley 'The occupational structure of England c.1750-1871 A preliminary report' (2008)

'The development of agrarian capitalism and the decline of family farming in England.' (2005).

'The nature and scale of the cottage economy' (2002)



© 2007 Faculty of History, University of Cambridge Information provided by webmaster@hist.cam.ac.uk.