Projects
I specialise in conducting original research and communicating complex ideas in digestible forms.
I’ve developed multiple projects across various platforms on the history of prisons, prison education and the history of reading, delivered audiences including policymakers, community historians, journalists, practitioners, prisoners, students, and anyone interested in history or the historical context for current events.
WEBSITE & DATABASES
Prison History
Prison History hosts resources which further our knowledge of the practice and experience of imprisonment in the British Isles from c.1500 to the twentieth century.
The first, 19th Century Prisons, is a database which contains critical information (operational dates, location, jurisdiction, population statistics, and appearances in primary and secondary sources) on, and lists of surviving archives for, 843 English local prisons (418), convict prisons (17), prison hulks (30) and lock ups (378) used to confine those accused and convicted of crime in the period 1800-1899.
The second, Your Local Lock-Up, aims to recover as many lock-ups as possible that existed in the British Isles between the 16th and the 20th century. The database contains nearly 1000 lock-ups and invites members of the public to contribute further information on these, or new lock-ups.
The website also features stories and videos on the history of the prison created by me and contributors who are passionate about recovering this important history.
The website was generously funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and The Open University.
ONLINE COURSE
Exploring the History of Prisoner Education
A free, online course on OpenLearn, the Open University’s free-learning platform, on the history of prison education. It is based on the research for my book, Illiterate Inmates, and was developed in collaboration with Prisoners’ Education Trust, and with the help of former prisoners employed as consultants.
Films created for this course, which together form a self-contained course on the history of the prison, have also been uploaded to YouTube.
This project was generously funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AH/S012834/1).
★★★★★ - Winner of the Royal Historical Society prize for innovation in teaching (2022)
“Rosalind has created new learning opportunities for prisoners and prison staff, bridging the gap between pedagogic and academic theory and practice.
The use of outreach work to improve prison education demonstrates a high level of innovation working with a marginalised group of students.”
- Royal Historical Society
ONLINE LECTURES
Supporting GCSE students studying the history of crime and punishment
***** Coming soon…
I have been working with producers at MASSOLIT, an organisation that works with university academics to deliver short video lectures in literature, history and the social sciences for students in secondary schools.
Working together, we have created a bespoke series of lectures on the history of the prison in England and Wales between 1750 and 1900 to support GCSE students studying the Crime and Punishment module.
OPEN TALKS
The history of the penal treadmill
In 2024, I worked with colleagues at The Open University in Wales to deliver a video on the history of the penal treadmill for their new OpenTalks series. Short films in this series deliver research, opinion pieces or OU expertise in an accessible form.
Given the growing interest in and need for prison reform, I worked with the team to create a video on the history of the penal treadmill which would draw pertinent connections with the present. At the centre of the film is the surviving treadmill at Beaumaris Prison in North Wales.
Additional content on the invention of the penal treadmill written by me is available on OpenLearn, the Open University’s free-learning platform.
Other projects
Between 2006 and 2009, I was a research fellow on the AHRC-funded project, The Reading Experience Database. I worked with a team to create a public-facing database containing more than 30,000 record engagements of text from the period 1450-1945.
From 2009 to 2011, as an AHRC co-investigator, I worked with software developers to internationalise the project, through the creation of a federated search engine interrogating multiple, national reading experience databases. Since 2011, I have remained a member of the RED Management Board.
In 2010, on the basis of an article I had written on the possibilities for connecting digital resources in the history of crime, I was invited to become a member of the advisory board for the Bodleian Library project, Mapping Crime Beyond the John Johnson Collection. This was one of the first digital resources to use record linkage across platforms and significantly enhanced the accessibility of this unique collection of 19th-century ephemera.
Contact me
To talk about media, consultancy, broadcast and project opportunities, please get in touch - I’d love to chat.