Dr Michael Reeve

Lecturer in Modern British History

michael.reeve@open.ac.uk

Biography

Professional biography

I joined the OU in 2021 as an Associate Lecturer on the 'Discovering the Arts and Humanities' module and took up my main current role as Lecturer in Modern British History in the History Department in 2022. I taught previously at Bishop Grosseteste University and Leeds Beckett University. I completed a doctorate in History at the University of Hull in 2019 (including a Postgraduate Certificate in Heritage Research), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

I have also completed an MA in Social and Cultural History at the University of Leeds (2015) and a BA in English & History at Leeds Beckett University (2014). Prior to completing these degrees, I spent four years studying Social Sciences part-time at the OU: this is where my passion for higher education and research really began. This experience has since inspired my openness to interdisciplinary research approaches.

I am a Fellow of Advance HE (Higher Education Academy) and of the Royal Historical Society, as well as Co-Chair of HistoryLab+, a network dedicated to supporting and advocating for Early Career Historians, based at the Institute of Historical Research. At the OU, I am on the steering committee of the Centre for War and Peace in the Twentieth Century, and a member of the Health and the Arts Research Group. I also recently joined the Assessing History in HE Editorial Group, which forms part of a wider History UK working group on History assessment in UK Higher Education.

I am currently working on my second book, a study of tobacco consumption and modern war in Britain, which builds upon my earlier work on the topic published in a range of academic journals and edited volumes. This follows my debut monograph, Bombardment, Public Safety and Resilience in English Coastal Communities during the First World War, which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021.

Research interests

I am a historian of modern Britain, with research interests related to the social and cultural history of war, consumption, medicine, wellbeing and health, and empire. I am particularly interested in the endurance and resilience of civilians and service personnel in the context of war. This interest, in endurance and resilience among ordinary people, runs like a thread throughout my work in diverse areas of modern British and European History.

My current research project focuses on the use of tobacco by military personnel and non-combatants in the context of modern wars involving Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the Crimean War, Second Anglo-Boer War, and the First and Second World Wars. This includes analysis and discussion of lay and expert medical discourses on smoking (mental and physical health and wellbeing), the production technologies, logistics and economics of wartime tobacco, the social and cultural histories of smoking in war contexts, and the implications of the study of wartime smoking for broader understandings of civilian and military welfare, consumption and endurance/resilience in periods of conflict and crisis. As a corollary to this research, I have also initiated a policy-focused 'challenge' as part of the OU's Open Societal Challenges programme: 'The 'pernicious habit': the enduring popularity of nicotine in everyday life'.

Recent publications (see the full list here)

Books:

Bombardment, Public Safety and Resilience in English Coastal Communities during the First World War (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
REVIEWS: Northern History; Urban History, First World War Studies.

Journal articles and book chapters:

‘Managing risk in the ‘danger zone’: Defensive infrastructure and public safety discourses on the north-east coast of England during the First World War’, Coastal Studies & Society, 1 (2-4) (2022), 180-208. Open Access.

‘‘Are we downhearted? NO!’: representing war damage and destruction following bombardment on the First World War ‘home front’’, Critical Military Studies, 7 (4) (2021), 397-417.

‘‘Something-to-smoke, at the right time, is a godsend’: voluntary action and the provision of cigarettes to soldiers during the First World War’, in Redcoats to Tommies: The Experience of the British Soldier from the Eighteenth Century, eds. Kevin Linch and Matthew Lord (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2021), 120-48.

‘‘An Empire Dock’: Place Promotion and the Local Acculturation of Imperial Discourse in ‘Britain’s Third Port’’, Northern History, 58 (1) (2021), 129-50.

Online articles (recent):

'Smoking and Vaping in Historical Perspective', History & Policy, February 2025. Available here.

'Young people took up smoking during the pandemic – how tobacco has been used for stress relief for more than a century', The Conversation, December 2023. Available here.

Teaching interests

I am History discipline lead on the cross-disciplinary Level 1 module Revolutions (A113) and a member of the team for the Level 3 module Europe 1914-1989: war, peace, modernity (A327). I have also contributed learning materials and lectures to the new MA in History. I am part of the production team for a new twentieth-century Europe module, for which work is currently in progress, and for which I am Employability Lead. I am also an Associate Lecturer on the Level 1 module Discovering the arts and humanities (A111).

Impact and engagement

Throughout 2025 I am working with the Heugh Battery Museum in Hartlepool to curate a new exhibition and programme of events on working-class mutual aid and commemoration following the December 1914 bombardment of the town, under the title 'Remembering to Help: Hartlepool’s Practical Response to Adversity during the First World War'. This collaborative work is funded by the Society for the Study of Labour History's public engagement grants scheme.

I have a range of other public engagement experience, including work on several television, radio and podcast productions for the likes of the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and the Western Front Association. I have also worked on heritage projects at the North of England Civic Trust (now known as Cultura Trust), Big Ideas and Civic Voice. For more information, visit my website.

External collaborations

Contributions to learned societies and professional bodies:

Centre for War and Peace in the Twentieth Century (OU). Steering Committee member since 2023.
Health and the Arts Research Group (OU). Member since 2024.
HistoryLab+ (Institute of Historical Research). Committee member since 2020. Co-Chair since February 2025.
History UK. Member of the Assessing History in HE Editorial Group since 2023.
Ridings of Yorkshire Society. Committee member since 2024.
Society for the Study of Labour History. Web editor and social media officer, Executive Committee member, 2017-20.

Editing and peer-review experience:

In 2017, I co-edited a special issue of the International Journal of Regional and Local History with Andrew McTominey on northern identity, history and heritage. Read it here.

I have provided manuscript peer reviews for the academic journals Urban History, First World War Studies and Home Front Studies, and have reviewed book proposals and full manuscripts for Palgrave Macmillan.

Prizes for research:

Gordon Forster Essay Prize 2020 (awarded by the Northern History journal).
European Association for Urban History, Postgraduate Paper Prize, runner-up (bi-annual conference, Rome, 2018).
Beresford Award, Yorkshire History Prize 2016 (awarded by the Yorkshire Society).

Funding:

My research, public engagement and professional development has been funded by grants and awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Society for the Study of Labour History, the Big Lottery Fund, the University of Louvain (Historial de la Grande Guerre), the Economic History Society, the Open University Fellowship Academy and OpenARC, the Open University Arts & Humanities Research Centre.