Emma Wordsworth

PhD Candidate in History

I am a PhD student in History, supervised by Professor Samita Sen and Dr Bronwen Everill. I have a broad working interest in nineteenth-century global, imperial, and comparative history, with a particular focus on British humanitarianism and disaster relief in different regions.

My PhD research compares British debates about famine relief in India, China, and the Ottoman Empire across the course of the 1870s. Namely, I examine British responses to the famines in Bengal (1873-1874), Asia Minor (1873-1875), southern India (1876-1878) and northern China (1876-1879). More specifically, I am interested in how British famine relief advocates constructed a global hierarchy of suffering which valued some famine victims’ lives above others’. My project also considers how Britain’s politicoeconomic interests and global governance strategies informed which communities (be they racial, gendered, religious, regional, age-based, or class-based) received famine relief, and on what terms. By situating British famine relief responses within a global, rather than solely imperial context, I aim to historicise the contingencies and inequalities that informed British humanitarian assistance in different contexts.

I have also collaborated on a research project with Professor Maartje Abbenhuis and Dr Branka Bogdan on the dum-dum bullets controversy of the 1890s, looking specifically at the imperial, racial, humanitarian, medical, scientific, and international legal contexts of the Hague's prohibition of expanding bullets.

My PhD study is funded by the Cambridge Trust's Prince of Wales and Smuts Cambridge International Scholarship. Prior to commencing my PhD, I gained a First Class BA (Hons) and a First Class Master's in History from Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. My BA (Hons) dissertation focused on the emergence of socialist women's internationalism in Europe in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

I was a co-convenor of the Cambridge World History workshop for 2021-2022, and am co-convening the Social and Economic History Workshop for 2022-2023.

Research Interests

• Nineteenth-century global, imperial, and world history

• History of humanitarianism

• History of food

• Modern Britain and the British Empire

• South Asian history

• Middle Eastern history (late-Ottoman period)

• Chinese history (late-Qing period)

• History of capitalism

• Gender and sexuality history

• Women’s history

• History of missionary activity

• Agrarian and rural history

• Animal history

• History of political thought, particularly about race, political economy, and imperialism

‘“Tomorrow’s Dawn Brings Deliverance”: Constructing a Socialist Women’s Internationalism in Europe, 1890-1907’, New Historians Conference, Victoria University of Wellington (July 2019).



‘“Working Women of the World, Unite!”: Socialist Women’s Internationalism in Europe, 1890-1907’, Australasian Association for European History Biannual Conference, ‘The Revenge of Europe’s Past’, University of Queensland (July 2019).



‘British Approaches to Famine Relief in Bengal and Asia Minor, 1873-75’, History Graduate Conference, University of Auckland (November 2020).



‘Sympathy, Strategy or Self-Interest? British Famine Relief in Bengal and Asia Minor, 1873-75’, New Historians Conference, Victoria University of Wellington (November 2020).



‘“One part Trojan Horse, one part opiate”: British Famine Relief in Bengal and Asia Minor, 1873-75’, Britain and the World Conference, Plymouth University (June 2021).



‘Reconciling self-interest and altruism in Victorian relief discourses during the Bengal and Anatolian famines, 1873-75’, Australasian Association for European History Biannual Conference, Australian National University (July 2021).



(upcoming) ‘The Struggle to Save Lives, Souls, and Societies: Victorian Famine Relief in Bengal and Asia Minor, 1873-1875’, Colonial/Postcolonial New Researchers’ Workshop 2021/2022, IHR History Lab (January 2022).

Key publications

Maartje Abbenhuis, Branka Bogdan, and Emma Wordsworth, ‘Humanitarian bullets and man-killers: Revisiting the history of arms regulation in the late nineteenth century’, International Review of the Red Cross, 2022, pp. 1-24. doi:10.1017/S1816383122000492

‘“Walking Backwards into a Public Future”: Schools Outreach and Historical Accessibility’, New Zealand Women Historian’s Forum, (2018). https://newzealandwomenhistoriansforum.wordpress.com/2018/11/25/walking-backwards-into-a-public-future-schools-outreach-and-historical-accessibility/

‘With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility (and Great Reward): British Approaches to Famine Relief in Bengal and Asia Minor, 1873-75’, Scottish Centre for Global History: Global History Blog, (2020). https://globalhistory.org.uk/2020/11/with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility-and-great-reward-british-approaches-to-famine-relief-in-bengal-and-asia-minor-1873-75/