People

These are the people that make up the Centre for the Study of Journalism and History.

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Directors of the centre

Prof Martin Conboy

Director of Centre

Professor Conboy has published widely on popular journalism, newspaper language and tabloid culture, covering the period from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries.

  • Conboy, M. (2017) ‘Janus and the journalists: discussions of British journalism 1880-1900’. J. Steel and M. Broersma (eds.) Redefining Journalism in the Era of the Mass Press, 1880-1920. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 31-43.

  • Conboy, M. (2016) ‘Residual radicalism as a popular commercial strategy: beginnings and endings’. L. Brake, C. Kaul and M.W. Turner (eds.) The News of the World and the British Press, 1843-2011: ‘Journalism for the Rich, Journalism for the Poor’. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 117-134.

  • Conboy, M. and Tang, M. (2016) ‘Core Blighty? Metaphors in the British Journalism Review 2011-2014.' Journalism Studies.

  • Conboy, M. (2015) ‘Journalism Studies and “The Crisis in Journalism” ’. K. Rafter and O’Brien, M. (eds.) The State in Transition: Essays in Honour of John Horgan. New Island Books: Dublin. 28-52

  • Conboy, M. (2015) “It is Nobbut (Only) an Oligarchy that Calls Itself a ‘We’”: Perceptions of Journalism and Journalists in Britain 1880-1900. Journalism Studies Published online first DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2015.1017409

Full academic profile

Prof Adrian Bingham

Director of Centre

Professor Bingham has used popular newspapers to explore the social and cultural history of twentieth century Britain, focusing in particular on the themes of gender and sexuality. He has recently published a paper for History and Policy on the press coverage of child sexual abuse.

  • “Peace and Future Cannon Fodder”? Journalism and the Great War after 1918’, special issue of Journalism Studies, 17/4 (2016)

  • ‘“Gross interference with the course of justice”: The News of the World and the Moors Murder trial’, in Laurel Brake, Chandrika Kaul and Mark W. Turner (eds), ‘Journalism for the Rich, Journalism for the Poor’: The News of the World and the British Press, 1843-2011 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

  • ‘Pin-up culture and Page 3 in the Popular Press’, in Maggie Andrews and Sallie McNamara (eds), Women and the Media: Femininity and Feminism in Britain, 1900 to the Present (Bas)

Full academic profile

Academic staff

Prof Jane Hodson

Prof Hodson is interested in the interface of language and literature, and particularly the way in which style is contested at an ideological level. She has written about the politics of language and style in the Romantic Period.

  • Language and Revolution in Burke, Wollstonecraft, Paine, and Godwin (Ashgate, 2007)

  • 'Women write the rights of women: the sexual politics of the personal pronoun in the 1790s' Language and Literature 16:3 (2007) 281-304.

Full academic profile

Dr Hamish Mathison

Dr Mathison is a specialist in eighteenth century literature, and has published on newspapers and popular print.

  • ‘Tropes of Promotion and Well-Being: Advertisement and the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Periodical Press’ in The News, 1600-1800: New Approaches to Newspaper History in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. J. Raymond (Frank Cass, 1999) pp. 206-225.

  • ‘Robert Hepburn and the Edinburgh Tatler: a study in an early British periodical’ in Media History (vol 11, n. 1/2, 2005)

Full academic profile

Dr Marcus Nevitt

Dr Nevitt is a specialist in seventeenth-century literature. He has written on early modern women´s writing and on Ben Jonson and news writing in the seventeenth century.

  • ‘Ben Jonson and the Serial Publication of News’ in Joad Raymond (ed.) News Networks in Seventeenth-Century Britain and Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), pp. 53-68. also published in a special double issue of Media History 11.1/2 (April 2005).

  • Women and the Pamphlet Culture of Revolutionary England, 1640-1660 (Ashgate, 2006)

Full academic profile

Dr John Steel

Dr Steel works in the area of press freedom and censorship. He is particularly interested in the ways in which ‘narratives’ of press freedom are woven into historical and contemporary debates concerning democratic culture and journalistic practice. He is also a member of the WRoCAH network which is exploring Anticlericalism and Freedom of the Press. His most recent work explores the normative foundations of journalism and he is currently writing a book on the British Radical Tradition and Freedom of Speech for Routledge.

  • Steel, J. (2017) “‘Disruption’ in UK journalism education? A study of narratives of resilience”, Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies (forthcoming)

  • Steel, J. (2017) “Liberal’ Reform and Normativity in Media Analysis”, in A. Abraham-Hamanoiel; D. Freedman; G. Khiabany; K. Nash & J. Petley (eds.) Liberalism in Neo-liberal Times, London: Goldsmiths University Press, (in press)

  • Eldridge II, S. & Steel, J. (2016) “Normative Expectations: Co-production as a mode of assessing journalism’s normative claims”, Journalism Studies, 17(7), pp. 817-826

  • Steel, J. (2016) ‘Reappraising Journalism’s Normative Foundations’, in M. Broersma & C. Peters (eds.) Rethinking Journalism Revisited, London: Routledge, pp. 35-48

  • Steel, J. & Broersma, M. (eds.) Redefining Journalism in the Era of the Mass Press 1880-1920, (Routlege, Taylor & Francis, 2016)

  • Steel, J. & Broersma, M. (eds.) (2015) Special Edition: “Redefining Journalism in the Era of the Mass Press”, Media History, 21(3), pp. 235-312

  • Conboy, M; Steel, J (eds) The Routledge Companion to Media History, (Routledge, 2014)

  • Steel, J. Journalism & Free Speech (Routledge, 2012)

  • Steel, J. 'Leveson: Solution or Symptom? Class, crisis and the degradation of civil life', Ethical Space, (vol. 10 n. 1, 2013) pp. 8-14

Full academic profile

Minyao Tang

Minyao's research looks at the metaphorical representations of China in the economic press, with an emphasis on exploring how Sinological understanding of China has been shaped historically. Minyao is currently working as the conference organizer and research assistant for CHINED VI, to be held in Sheffield in June, 2017.

Christopher Shoop-Worrall

Christopher's research explores the political content of the early popular press, as well the political reactions to the rise of this new political press. He has presented his work into Labour and the early mass media across the country, and has been accepted to present at the ECREA 2017 Journalism Studies conference in Odense, Denmark. He is also a Postgraduate Member of the Royal Historical Society; a co-organiser of the upcoming Cato Street Conference in September 2017 and the editorial assistant for the forthcoming Edinburgh History of the British and Irish Press (Twentieth Century Volume).

Full academic profile

Steven Harkins

Steven's recent research focuses on the articulation of poverty and inequality in the news. His previous work has focussed on public relations and corporate lobbying. He was also part of the British International Studies Association's "Teaching about Terrorism" research team. He is a former member of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s expert communications group and has written for the British Medical Journal, Critical Studies on Terrorism, LSE Review of Books, the Conversation and Spinwatch.

  • Harkins, S. & Lugo-Ocando J. (2017) Poor News: Media discourses of poverty in times of austerity, London: Rowman and Littlefield (Forthcoming)

  • Briant, E. & Harkins S. (2017) Managing the social impacts of austerity Britain: The cultural politics of neo-liberal ‘nudging’, in Berry, D. (ed.) Cultural Politics in the Age of Austerity, London: Routledge

  • Harkins, S. & Lugo-Ocando, J. (2016) All people are equal but some people are more equal than others: How and why inequality became invisible in the British press, in Servaes, J. & Oyedemi, T. (eds.) The Praxis of social inequality in media: A global perspective, London: Rowman and Littlefield

James Whitworth

James’ research utilises a multi-modal approach to investigate the visual and linguistic role of pocket cartoons in British newspapers between 1939 and 1979.

He is a nationally syndicated newspaper cartoonist. James' work appears daily in papers throughout the UK from Edinburgh to the south of England. He has also contributed to a wide range of newspapers and magazines, including The Independent, Private Eye (for whom he has also written jokes) and Prospect.

James is also the author of the DCI Miller crime novels, and lectures on journalism courses at universities including Sheffield Hallam, Leeds Trinity, Huddersfield, and Derby.

Full academic profile

Honorary member

Prof Michael Bromley

Dr Bromley has published widely on journalism and newspapers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was a founding co-editor of the journal Journalism and head of the School of Journalism and Communication, University of Queensland (2007-2012) and head of the Department of Journalism at City, University of London (2014-2016)

  • (with Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova) (in press, 2018) Global Journalism – An Introduction. London: Palgrave.

  • Bromley, M. (2017). ‘Investigative journalism and human rights’. In Tumber, H. and Waisbord, S. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Media and Human Rights (pp. 220–228). Abingdon: Routledge.

  • Bromley, M. (2016). ‘Televisual newspapers? When 24/7 television news channels join newspapers as “old media”’. In Cushion, S. and Sambrook, R. (eds), The Future of 24-hour News: New Directions, New Challenges (pp. 129–142). New York: Peter Lang.

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