Dr Donna Loftus

Professional biography

Senior Lecturer in History.

Head of School, Arts and Humanities. 

Associate Dean for Curriculum, Qualifications and Partnerships 2017 to 2021.

I joined the OU in 2000 after research and teaching posts at the University of Portsmouth and the University of Chichester including a British Academy funded project, ‘Autobiography and the Victorian middle-class’. I have continued to develop research and teaching on nineteenth-century British socio-economic and cultural history. Working at the OU has enabled me to pursue interests in inter-disciplinarity, opening up traditional topics to new methods, questions and approaches, and helping make British history relevant to a broader range of students.

Research interests

My research interests are centred on responses to, and perceptions of, industrial and urban life in nineteenth-century Britain; in particular, the relationship between political economy, social investigation and the everyday experience of business and work.

‘Life writing and Victorian culture’

• Considers how middle-class men emerged as a historical force in the nineteenth century. 
• Focuses on the way economic and social transition were understood through life writing and how different types of temporality are used to explain continuity and change.

‘Capital and labour: Manufacturing consensus’

• Examines the use of capital and labour as mechanisms for describing capitalism and organising industry in nineteenth-century England. 
• Explores the co-existence of mobilities such as the free market, self-help and social mobility alongside fixed and located ideas of community and class.

‘Work in Nineteenth Century London’

• Initially funded through the Open University’s Research Development Fund and the Economic History Society.
• Explores the nature of work in London, the links between production and consumption and the status of the small master who is neither capitalist nor artisan.
• Contrasts contemporary social and economic theory with the everyday logic of the late nineteenth century metropolitan manufacturing economy.

Teaching interests

I teach the social and cultural history of Britain in relation to the wider world. Contributions to teaching include:

• The 'age of equipoise' for 'The British Isles and the Modern World, 1789 to 1914'
• ‘Men, women and Empire’ for Empire: 1492 to 1975
• ‘The ‘new imperialism’ - Africa and the Victorians’, for Exploring History: Medieval to Modern 1400-1900.

Always keen to use interdiscplinary approaches to open new questions, I worked with Art Historians on ‘Art of Benin: changing relations between Europe and Africa’ for the undergraduate foundation course The Arts Past and Present and with English Literature on Victorian Manchester, exploring different responses to industrialisation through a range of voices and texts.

I am committed to life-long learning and as Associate Dean for Curriculum, Qualifications and Partnerships, took part in the Curriculum Plan and Review which developed strategies for a broad-based curriculum portfolio, one that can meet the diverse interests of a wide range of students. 

Currently supervising  PhD students on aspects of nineteenth century social and cultural history and would be interested in hearing from students considering a thesis on culture and society (including class and class relations), the market and social reform in nineteenth century Britain.

Impact and engagement

I am a member of the Social History Society and one of the convenors of the strand on 'Economies, culture and consumption'.