Dr Vincent Trott

Professional biography

I joined the OU History Department in 2017 and became Senior Lecturer in History in 2023. I was previously a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, where I taught publishing and book history. I completed a collaborative doctoral degree, sponsored by the Open University and the British Library, in 2014. Before that, I studied for an MA in History at Queen Mary University of London, and I completed a BA in History at the University of Manchester. I have also worked in the museum sector, spending six years working part-time at the Museum of London.

Research interests

My research interests address modern British and American history, with a particular focus on the First World War; the history of publishing and print culture; propaganda; cultural memory; and the history of humour. My first book, Publishers, Readers and the Great War (Bloomsbury, 2017), discusses how the publishing industry shaped the popular memory of the First World War in Britain between 1918 and 2014. 

I am currently writing a book about humour, propaganda and political satire in the United States during the First World War. This research examines how a range of cultural products – including satirical magazines, editorial cartoons, popular songs, and silent films – exploited humour for propagandistic purposes between 1914 and 1918. 

Publications

Book:

• Publishers, Readers and The Great War: Literature and Memory since 1918 (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Journal Articles:

• 'Humour, Neutrality and Preparedness: American Satirical Magazines and the First World War, 1914-1917', War in History (2022)
• 'Introduction: New Directions in Print Culture Studies' (with Caroline Davis), Logos, Volume 20, Issue 2-3 (2018)
• ‘Remembering War, Resisting Myth: Veteran Autobiographies and the Great War in the Twenty-First Century’, The Journal of War and Culture Studies, Volume 6, Number 4 (2013)

Chapters:

• 'The American Library Association, Bibliotherapy, and the First World War', in Siobhan Campbell, Sara Haslam and Edmund King (eds), A Hundred Years of Bibliotherapy: Healing Through Books (London: Routledge, forthcoming)
• 'Political Cartoons', in Stefan Berger (ed.), Bloomsbury History: Theory and Method (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023).
• 'Battles', in Marysa Demoor, Cedric Van Dijk and Birgit Van Puymbroeck (eds), The Edinburgh Companion to First World War Periodicals (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
• 'The Poetic Marketplace', in Jane Potter (ed.), A Cambridge History of World War One Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023)
• ‘“The market is getting flooded with them”: Richard Aldington’s Death of a Hero and the War Books Boom’, in Nicola Wilson (ed.), The Book World: Selling and Distributing Literature: 1900 – 1940 (Brill, 2016)

Book Reviews:

• Tim Dayton and Mark W. Van Wienen (eds), 'A History of American Literature and Culture of the First World War', First World War Studies (2023)
• Sally Minogue and Andrew Palmer, 'The Remembered Dead: Poetry, Memory and the First World War', English Studies (2020)
• Julian Walker, 'Words and the First World War: Language, Memory, Vocabulary', First World War Studies, Volume 10 (2019)
• Robert Tombs and Emile Chabal (eds), 'Britain and France in Two World Wars: Truth, Myth and Memory', Reviews in History (2014).

Teaching interests

I have produced teaching materials on a wide range of different topics in modern history. I am currently co-chairing the production of a new module, Europe1914-2014:The Remaking of a Continent, which will launch in 2026. Between 2021 and 2023, I was a member of the module production team for Empires: Power, Resistance, Legacies (A328), for which I wrote a unit on imperial lives and careers.

I also helped to produce our Level 1 module Revolutions (A113), for which I authored two units, one addressing the revolutionary consequences of the First World War (co-authored with Dr Robin Mackie), and another exploring the USA in the long 1960s. Before this, I authored the unit 'Urbanisation, degeneration and understandings of the big city' for the module The British Isles and the Modern World, 1789-1914 (A225).

I was previously the Module Team Chair for The Making of Welsh History (A329) and deputy chair for Europe 1914-1989: war, peace, modernity (A327).

Impact and engagement

I am the co-author of a First World War CPD course for secondary school history teachers. I am also the author of the FutureLearn course 'World War 1: Trauma and Memory', and in 2014 I helped to curate the British Library exhibition 'Enduring War: Grief, Grit and Humour'.

I have written articles on the First World War for a range of online publications:

• 'The Experience and Memory of 11 November 1918' (OpenLearn)
• '"The Poetry is in the Pity": Wilfred Owen and the Memory of the First World War' (Oxford World War One Centenary)
• 'Viewpoint: The World War One Film over 20 million people went to see' (BBC News Magazine)
• 'Prose Reponses to the First World War' (British Library website)

External collaborations

I currently manage SHARP-L, the listserv for the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. I previously worked as the society's Recording Secretary (2019–2023) and Executive Assistant (2015–2019).