I am an environmental historian of animal-human relationships in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly interested in the senses, materiality, interspecies histories, and time and temporality. 

Research

My book project, developing my AHRC funded PhD (Bristol and Exeter, completed in September 2021) explores the flow of animal bodies that supplied the taxidermy trade in the long nineteenth century in Britain and the British Empire. It investigates the materialities, sensations and temporalities of specimen creation in relation to colonial hunting and skinning, transportation and shipping networks, embodied craft, and museum and exhibition display. My PhD was supported by the South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership, and co-supervised by Professor Peter Coates at the University of Bristol and Professor Bryony Onciul at the University of Exeter. 

Before starting as a Lecturer in Imperial and Environmental History, I was a Research Associate on Dr Andy Flack's AHRC project, 'Dark-dwellers as more-than-human misfits', researching perceptions of the sensory adaptations of dark-adapted and nocturnal creatures, drawing on approaches from disability studies, sensory studies and environmental history.

My future research will interrograte experimental animal skin, and animal testing, and asks questions about what it meant to be human - and animal - in the nineteeth and early twentieth century, in an anglo-american context. 

Teaching and other roles

In the 2023-24 session I am teaching:

• Environment and History (MA)
• Approaches to History (MA)
• Themes in Environmental Humanities (MA)
• Global Empires (Yr 3)
• Picturing the 20th Century (Yr 3)
• Public Role of the Historian (Yr 2)
• Decolonisation (Yr 2)
• Outlaws (Yr 2)
• War and Society (Yr 1)
• Approaching the Past (Yr 1)

I have additionally taught on:

• Wild Things (Yr 2)
• Global History (Yr 2)
• Rethinking History (Yr 2) 
• Modern World (Yr 1, History)
• Ideas and Society (Yr 2, Liberal Arts)
• Foundation Year in Arts and Humanities (supervisor)

I am the current Study Abroad Academic Director (SAAD) for History. I have held roles including administrator for the Centre for Environmental Humanities (CEH), PGR Officer for the CEH and Co-convenor of the Literary and Visual Landscape seminar series.

Email: alice.would@bristol.ac.uk