Jake William Bransgrove

Social and cultural histories of British elites; the ‘long eighteenth century’; late imperial Britain and the Commonwealth; British art, architecture and material culture; temporality and materiality; modern global and imperial histories; architecture and empire; London history.

In the Faculty I teach seminars on Global History for Part II: Historical Argument and Practice. I am available to supervise undergraduate History students from Easter 2024.

Past appointments:

2021-22: Tutor in History of Art, University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh College of Art)

2021-22: Tutor in Architectural History, University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh College of Art)

2018-19: Graduate Teaching Assistant in History, University of Auckland

In addition to my work on Banks, I maintain an interest in the relationship between architecture and the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly in relation to the Dominions. This is grounded in my research on the English architect Sir Herbert Baker (1862–1946). As part of my work in this area, I am currently an interviewer for the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain’s An Oral History of British Architectural Historians, a project undertaken in partnership with the British Library Sound Archive. In 2022 I received a commendation for my entry to the Society's Hawksmoor Essay Prize. As of March 2024, I also serve as a member of the Fabric Advisory Committee of Chelmsford Cathedral.

For the 2023/24 academic year, I am a Co-convenor for the Modern British History Workshop and Editorial Lead for the Historian Highlight section of the Faculty's graduate student-run blog, Doing History in Public. In March and April 2025 I will be a Research Fellow at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California.

'The Associational World of Sir Joseph Banks: Elite Social Networks in Action, c. 1760-1820', talk delivered at the British History in the Long Eighteenth Century Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, London, 20 March 2024

'The Associational World of Sir Joseph Banks: Elite Social Networks in Action, c. 1760-1820', talk delivered at the Material Culture Forum, Cambridge, 5 March 2024

'Architecture and the British Empire', talk delivered for the Trinity Hall Arts and Humanities Open Day, Trinity Hall, Cambridge, 29 February 2024

'James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks: Portraits of a Friendship and its Afterlife', paper presented at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Conference, University of Edinburgh, 13 July 2023

‘Reconstructing 32 Soho Square: The London Home of Sir Joseph Banks (1743–1820)’, paper presented at the Landau-Paris Symposium on the Eighteenth Century, Essen, 4 March 2023

‘The Fifth Column: Sir Herbert Baker (1862–1946) and the Architecture of Indian Dominionhood’, History Department Seminar, University of Auckland, 18 August 2022

‘A Home for the Future Dominion: Sir Herbert Baker and India House in Inter-war London,’ paper presented at the annual Britain and the World Conference, University of Plymouth, 17 June 2022

‘”The True Way of Copying the Antique”: Skeuomorphs in Late-Georgian Architectural Sculpture,’ paper presented at the conference Valuing Sculpture: Contemporary Perspectives on Art, Craft and Industry, 1660-1860, online, hosted by the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, 27 July 2021

‘James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks: Papers Held at Sir George Grey Special Collections,’ Auckland Libraries Heritage Talks, Auckland Central City Library, 20 March 2019