Ms Kerry-Louise Apps

Kerry Apps is a final-year doctoral researcher within FASS. Her project 'Imagining Asia at Ham House, c.1672-1698' is a study of the significance of Asian objects, textiles, and commodities at the Restoration court through the lens of the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale. On a day-to-day basis, Kerry trawls through the Restoration-era inventories collated for the Duchess, tracing the amount of nutmeg, sugar, or cinnamon consumed, reads bills and letters documenting the Duke’s love of Virginia tobacco, or stares intently at cabinets of glimmering Japanese lacquer, polychromatic Chinese screens, and some of the earliest surviving examples of British chinoiserie. This PhD project is funded by the AHRC and completed as a CDA between the OU and the National Trust. Kerry's PhD is a culmination of an academic career focused on the social, global, and colonial histories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As a career changer, before embarking on an MPhil at Cambridge in 2021 and her PhD in 2022, Kerry taught secondary history in South London for seven years. During her teaching career, Kerry published numerous journal articles on the teaching of history and has written for BBC Bitesize, BBC History Extra, Hodder Education, and the DfE.