Biography:
Currently working towards my PhD in History thanks to a Cambridge International Scholarship (Cambridge Trust) and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Research Fellowship. Received my M.A. and B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Ottawa where I was nominated for the Humanities Thesis Prize (2015) and received the Department of History Plaque as the top undergraduate student (2012). During this time I received the SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship (2013) and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (2014) as well as a generous research grant through SSHRC's Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement (2013).
During my M.A. I was employed by the University of Ottawa as a teaching assistant in the Department of Philosophy, leading discussion groups, grading essays and exams, and assisting students in introductory courses on ethics, critical thinking and logic.
I have also had the pleasure of working for Members of the Canadian Parliament in various capacities from 2008-2013 and have several years of experience working in private sector historical research and document management.
Research Interests
My research focuses generally on British politics and the British Empire in the 'Age of Revolutions' (1765-1795). While my M.A. dissertation (University of Ottawa, 2014) examined the links in British imperial ideologies and policy-making between the concurrent crises in America and India following the Seven Years' War, my current project examines the continuation of the effects of empire on the British political public sphere through a case-study of the regulation of the East India Company between 1773 and 1784.
Research Supervision
Doctoral Supervisor: Dr. Renaud Morieux, Senior Lecturer in British History, Fellow, Jesus College, University of Cambridge
Master's Supervisor: Dr. Richard Connors, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Ottawa
Keywords
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Key Publications
Ben Gilding, 'The Rise and Fall of Hicky's Bengal Gazette: A Study in Transoceanic Political Culture.' Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. Online (2018) https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2018.1506870 (Print, Forthcoming 2019)
Ben Gilding, 'The Silent Framers of British North American Union: The Colonial Office and Canadian Confederation, 1851-1867.' Canadian Historical Review 99, no. 3 (September 2018): 349-393. https://doi.org/10.3138/chr.2017-0053
Ben Gilding and Richard Connors, "'Chatham's Ghost' and the Enduring Spectre of Lord Bute's Secret Influence: A Political Negotiation of 1778." Parliamentary History (Forthcoming, 2019).