Professor Stephen Conway was head of department 2012-15, before which he had served as chair of the board of examiners, departmental tutor, and admissions tutor. His research is focused on eighteenth-century Britain and its connections with the wider world.
PhD supervision
Stephen is interested in supervising projects on subjects related to eighteenth-century British and imperial history.
Current students: Catherine Beck, Gareth Davies
Recently completed: Recent supervisees have worked on Canada in the American imagination, 1760-1867; patronage and the Royal Navy; food cultures in eighteenth-century Britain; the Continental army and American identities; the idea of chivalry in eighteenth-century Britain; patronage and the Church of England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; the connections between India and North America in British imperial thought and policy, 1763-1775.
Major publications
- The British Isles and the War of American Independence (Oxford: OUP, 2000)
- War, State and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Oxford: OUP, 2006)
- Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe in the Eighteenth Century: Similarities, Connections, Identities (Oxford: OUP, 2011)
- Britannia's Auxiliaries: Continental Europeans and the British Empire, 1740-1800 (Oxford: OUP, 2017)
For a full list of publications, see Stephen's Iris profile.
Media appearances
Interviewed on George III for Lucy Worsley's British Monarchs (BBC); interviewed on poachers and their punishment for Julian Fellowes' programme on Great Houses (ITV).
Teaching
- Colonial and Revolutionary North America, 1607-1787 (first- and second-year undergraduate survey course)
- Britain and the American Colonies, 1760-1776 (third-year undergraduate special subject)
- Britons Abroad (second-year undergraduate research seminar)
- Continental Connections: Britain and Europe in the Eighteenth Century (MA History elective module)