Dr Meg Arnot

Qualifications: BA, MA, PhD Telephone: +44 (0)20 8392 3247 Email Address: M.Arnot@roehampton.ac.uk

I am currently Head of Humanities in the School of Arts and Principal Lecturer in Social and Cultural History at Roehampton University. Commencing a combined degree in Law and Arts at Melbourne University, I chose to only complete the BA honours degree in History before pursuing research on prostitution and the law in Australian history for my MA by dissertation at Melbourne. I came to the UK and continued resarching aspects of gender and crime for my PhD at Essex University. I remain fascinated by the relationship between the criminal justice system, society and culture, focusing on nineteenth-century Britain in my current research. I have edited, along with Cornelie Usborne, an important collection on gender and crime and am currently completing a social and cultural history of infanticide in nineteenth-century England.

Publications

Note: I publish under my full name, Margaret L. Arnot, though the name 'Meg Arnot' appears on one or two early pieces.

Books
(edited with Cornelie Usborne) Gender and Crime in Modern Europe, London: UCL Press, 1999

Chapters in Edited Books
'The Murder of Thomas Sandles: Meanings of a Mid-Nineteenth-Century Infanticide' in Mark Jackson (ed.), Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550-2000, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002

'Understanding Women Committing Newborn Child Murder in Victorian England' in Shani d'Cruze (ed.), Unguarded Passions: Gender, Class and "Everyday" Violence in Britain, c. 1850-1950, London: Longman, 2000

(with Cornelie Usborne) 'Why Gender and Crime? Aspects of an International Debate' in Gender and Crime in Modern Europe, 1999

(with Louise Jackson) 'Health' in An Introduction to Women's Studies, Beryl Madoc-Jones & Jennifer Coates (eds), Oxford: Blackwell, 1996

'The Oldest Profession in a New Britainnia' in A People's History of Australia, Vol. 3, Constructing a Culture, Verity Bergman and Jenny Lee (eds), Melbourne: McPhee Gribble/Penguin, 1988

Articles in Academic Journals
'Essay Review: Hilary Marland. Dangerous Motherhood: Insanity and Childbirth in Victorian Britain', History of Psychiatry, Vol. 18, No. 4, December 2007

'Infant Death, Child Care and the State: the Baby-farming Scandal and the First Infant Life Protection Legislation of 1872', Continuity and Change, Vol. 9, No. 2, August 1994, pp. 271-311

with Francisca de Haan, Penelope Collective, and Leonore Davidoff, 'Vrouwengeschiedenistijdschriften in drie continenten: Penelope, Lilith en Gender & History' in Francisca de Haan et. al. (eds) Het Raadsel Vrouwengeschiedenis, Nijmegen: Sun, 1989

Reports
The Law and Prostitution in Victoria 1834-1980, Historical Background Paper for the Victorian Inquiry into Prostitution, Melbourne: Government Printer, 1985

Other Writing
Articles on 'Leonore Davidoff' and 'Judith Walkowitz' in Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, Kelly Boyd (ed.), London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999

Various book reviews

Public Engagement Work

I commenced a deep interest in public engagement work in Australia, where I worked with a collective of young historians making a regular history programme for public radio, and played a key role in a project to preserve and archive records of the Women's Liberation Movement in Melbourne. My UK work has included:
Early 2003: 'Crime Team', TV Channel 4, main historical expert for one programme
25 March 2002: live discussion, Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4, about infanticide
22 January 2002: live discussion, 'Richard and Judy Show', TV Channel 4, about infanticide
18 September 1997: 'Leviathan', TV BBC 2, history magazine programme
May 1997: 'Cabbages and Kings', Radio 4 history discussion programme

PhD Supervision and Examining

Completed PhDs
Louise Ainsley Jackson (now Senior Lecturer in History at Edinburgh University), 'Child Sexual Abuse and the Law: London 1870-1914', 1997

Parminder Mann, 'A Comparative Study of the NAACP in Birmingham, Alabama and Detroit, Michigan 1945-1965', 2001

Current Topics Supervised
'Representations of Infanticide in England, 1880-1922'

'Chemical Warfare in the First World War: Technology, Propaganda and Popular Response in Great Britain and France'

'Women, Capital Offences and Judicial Mercy in Northern England during the Eighteenth Century'

External Examinations Undertaken
I have been the external examiner for PhDs at University College London and the University of Melbourne.

Other Professional Activities

I have refereed research grant applications for the Wellcome Trust History of Medicine Programme and the ESRC, and article and book manuscripts for journals and publishers. I was a founder editor of the Australian journal Lilith and co-organized an international conference on Gender and Crime held at Roehampton in 1995, which received a British Academy Small Conference Grant. I was a member of the History Benchmarking Group, April 1998-2000, which set the national standards for History teaching in UK universities, worked for the QAA during 1998-99 as an Academic Reviewer, and have been an external assessor for subject reviews at two different universities. I am currently a member the Social History Society and the British Association for Victorian Studies.

Research Expertise

Nineteenth-century British social and cultural history, particularly: women's and gender history; criminal justice history; the social history of medicine; and the history of sexuality and reproduction. I welcome prospective PhD students in these fields.

Teaching Expertise

I currently teach British, European, and some US social and cultural history, and historiography. I am very interested in maintaining sustainable provision of excellent History and Humanities education in universities. In the past I developed an innovative Humanities Programme and am currently involved with on-going programme developments at Roehampton.

Undergraduate Modules
Making Europe Modern? The 1890s

Crime and Punishment in England 1750-1914

History from Below

Histories

Cultural Constructions of Gender in the Nineteenth Century, A Comparative Perspective: England and the USA

MA Modules
Microhistory and Crime History

Theory and Methods

A previously taught module on Gender and Health has been retired, and I am involved with colleagues developing a new module on the Social History of Medicine

Undergraduate courses taught at Roehampton:

History
Media and Culture

Postgraduate courses taught at Roehampton:

Historical Research