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Joseph is a social historian with an interest in the military and popular protest in Britain from the mid-eighteenth century onwards. He took his PhD at the University of Essex (2012-16) under the supervision of Professor Peter Gurney. After working as a Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Essex he has now been appointed as an Lecturer (Teaching) at UCL. Both Joseph's PhD research and his upcoming monograph explore the themes of militarisation and social conflict in Britain during the French Wars (1793-1815). His interest in civil-military relations and popular protest has led him to study the socio-political context of the Peterloo Massacre (1819) and the popular memory of that seismic event up to the present day. His next research project will examine the role of the army in suppressing smuggling and popular protest from the Riot Act (1714) through to the Metropolitan Police Act (1829).
Major publications
- J. Cozens, 'The Making of the Peterloo Martyrs, 1819 to the present', in Keith Laybourn and Quentin Outram (eds), A History of Secular Martyrdom in the British and Irish Isles: From Peterloo to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 31-58.
- J. Cozens, '"The Blackest Perjury": Desertion, Military Justice, and Popular Politics in England, 1803-1805', Labour History Review, Vol. 79, No. 3 (2014), pp. 255-280.
- J. Cozens, 'Book Review: "Motivation in War: The Experience of Common Soldiers in Old-Regime Europe" (Cambridge, 2017)', Reviews in History, No. 2183 (October 2017).
