Piers Haslam
My doctoral project explores meanings and experiences of confirmed bachelorhood in England between 1880 and 1960. By taking a ‘queer critical’ approach to a diverse sample of diaries, letters, and autobiographies, my research calls for a new approach to the history of sexuality and masculinity in modern Britain. I am supervised by Dr Ben Griffin and funded by an Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership.
Before coming to Cambridge, I graduated with a first-class BA in History from Goldsmiths, University of London (2020) and twice won the Peter Galloway Prize as recognition of my high grades. I completed my MSt in Modern British History at the University of Oxford (2022), receiving a first for my dissertation ‘Debating the Bachelor Tax: Singleness, Masculinity, and Social Anxiety in England, 1900–1945’ and earning a distinction overall.
I co-convened the Cultural History Workshop 2023–24.
Gender history, history of sexuality, queer and trans history, and history of subjectivity.
Paper O7 - Modern Britain and Ireland, 1750–present.
Historical Thinking.
Historical Argument and Practice (HAP).
‘“The Moods of an Epicene”: Bachelorhood and Trans Feelings in Edwardian England’, Queer History Conference, California State University, Fullerton and Fin de Sexe? A Symposium on Sexuality, University of Edinburgh, June 2024.
‘Is the Confirmed Bachelor Queer?’, Queer and Trans Philologies Conference, University of Cambridge, March 2024.
‘The Sorrows of Gilbert Harding: A Cultural History of Confirmed Bachelorhood in Modern Britain’, Cultural History Workshop, University of Cambridge, June 2023.
‘Bachelorhood and Queer History: Problems and Approaches’, Doing Queer and Trans Histories, University of Oxford, February 2022.
‘Quentin Crisp’s Last Word: Shifting Identities and Trans Resonances in Twentieth-Century Britain’, From Margins to Centre Conference, University of York, February 2020.
Contact
Tags & Themes
Key publications
Review of Queer Trades, Sex and Society: Male Prostitution and the War on Homosexuality in Interwar Scotland by Jeffrey Meek, Gender & History (2024), https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12816.