Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies
PhD Students...Lindsay Porter
Some years after finishing my undergraduate degree in French and Art History from St Andrews University I enrolled in the MA course in Eighteenth Century Studies at York. In the intervening years, my career as a publisher’s editor and freelance writer had allowed me to pursue an interest in the culture of late eighteenth-century France. The interdisciplinarity of the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies was the perfect match for my earlier degree and the different perspectives that staff and students bring to the seminar discussions is what makes the Centre such a lively and inspiring place to study.
I am now in the final year of an AHRC-funded PhD under the supervision of Professor Alan Forrest, looking at popular rumour during the French First Republic. The York French Revolutionary Collection is a rich source of printed material covering this period as is the John Rylands Special Collection in Manchester. However, the bulk of my thesis draws on primary sources from the Police and National Archives in Paris. A travel grant from the AHRC allowed me to spend most of my second year living there, which hugely influenced the direction of my thesis.
During my third year I looked at ways of developing research ideas with public impact. I took part in the AHRC/BBC 3 New Generation of Thinkers workshop, working with BBC producers to discuss ways of communicating new research to a broader audience. An internship at York Minster, organised through IPUP, enabled me to use writing and research skills on a period other than my own. It was an interesting time to be involved with the Minster, as the recent discovery of the remains of Richard III and subsequent controversy proved the relevance of historical research to a wider public. I was also invited to present a paper at the Leverhume-funded Conspiracy and Democracy project at CRASSH at Cambridge, from which I gained valuable feedback.