Dr Kate Davison

I am a social and cultural historian of Britain in the ‘long’ eighteenth century, from around 1650-1850. My research to date has focused on the history of humour and laughter and has asked two central questions: what did people laugh at in eighteenth-century Britain, and what did that laughter do in social and political contexts? These questions have taken me into diverse fields, including histories of print culture, sociability, gender, race, and public politics. In particular, though, by exploring laughter’s role in social practices and the significance of humour as a vehicle for political ideas, my work has engaged with key historiographical debates around the ‘civilising process’ and rise of politeness, and the development of a ‘public sphere’ of sociability and political debate.

My research is influenced by a variety of disciplinary approaches, including those from anthropology, sociology and literary studies. I’ve been particularly interested in social network methods and how these new and digital techniques can be integrated into more traditional ways of studying individuals and communities in the past.

I am currently working on my first monograph, which is based on this research and centres on the figure of Edward ‘Ned’ Ward (1666-1731) – a tavern keeper and prolific satirist active in early eighteenth-century London. I am also developing a new project on women and intoxicants in Britain since the seventeenth century.