Dr. Michael Reeve PhD FHEA FRHistS

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Introduction

Michael Reeve is a social and cultural historian, interested in modern war and conflict, particularly military and civilian resilience. His current work is primarily concerned with tobacco consumption and smoking practices in the context of modern war, focusing on major conflicts involving Britain and its empire during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Michael is an interdisciplinary historian, whose research takes into account social, cultural, political, economic, material and spatial factors, looking at both macro and micro scales (from global forces and the actions of governments, to the activities of ordinary people, individuals and groups, as well as ‘non-human’ actors).

For more information on Michael’s research outputs, click here.

A central facet of this work is a concern with the social-psychological function and cultural significance of smoking for soldiers at the front and civilians at home, where tobacco becomes a means to steel resolve in the face of attack and to stave off pre-attack anxieties. This has implications for our understanding of military and civilian welfare, wartime and post-war healthcare, and perceptions of stress, anxiety, resilience and endurance. Michael also has broader research interests and teaching experience in the social and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Britain and Europe, including labour and communist history, the Second World War, the Cold War, consumption and the British empire.

Since December 2022, Michael has worked as Lecturer in Modern British History at the Open University, following more than two years as Lecturer in History at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln. In April 2020, Michael joined the relaunched committee of History Lab Plus, a network for Early Career Researchers based at the Institute of Historical Research, London. His first monograph, Bombardment, Public Safety and Resilience in English Coastal Communities during the First World War, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021.

Read Michael’s biography here.

Header image: ‘Soldiers smoking’, c. 1917, National Army Museum

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