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 forthcoming book - Skinning Empire: Environment, Embodiment and Time in British Taxidermy History - 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 - the origins of this research - was supported by the South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership (AHRC), 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 the environmental and embodied experiences of time and temporality in the long nineteenth century.

Teaching and other roles

In the 2024-25 session I am teaching:

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

I have additionally taught on:

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

I am Director of the Environmental Humanities Summer School. I am co-Events Officer and member of the steering committee for the Centre for Environmental Humanities. I have held roles including Study Abroad Academic Director (SAAD) for History, 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