Scholar - Women Also Know History

Participant Info

Keywords: Social and cultural history in the maritime world, Royal Navy, national identity, popular naval enthusiasm, interwar Britain, First World War, British popular culture, propaganda, Military, Naval history, 20th Century, Modern

Additional Contact Information: PhD Researcher- currently in final year of submission. Available to take on new projects from the autumn of 2021

About Me: Laura is a final year, NECAH-funded PhD researcher at the University of Hull, where she is examining the impact of popular naval enthusiasm on British national identity in the interwar period.

She completed her undergraduate dissertation on the Navy League and popular naval interest groups in the Edwardian period. Her dissertation was awarded the British Commission for Maritime Prize for ‘outstanding dissertation on maritime subjects’ for Undergraduate dissertations 2015. Her Masters examined the evolving representation of Jack Tar in the British popular consciousness between 1793-1835.

Laura’s specialisation is in the history of naval advocacy and interest groups. She has researched extensively on the representation of the Royal Navy in the British popular consciousness. Her main focus is on the Royal Navy and national identity during the First World War and interwar period.

Recent Publications

Academic Qualifications:

PhD in History, University of Hull: ‘They are people who have lost all sense of the sea’: Navalism and National Identity in Britain, 1914 – 1939′. Fully funded by a North of England Consortium for Arts and Humanities scholarship. Due for submission in the autumn of 2021.
Masters in History, University of Warwick: ‘”Goodbye to Tom Bowling?” The Evolution of the Representation of Jack Tar in the Popular British Consciousness 1793-1835’. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Laura_Burkinshaw/publications
BA (Hons) in History and English Literature, University of Hull: History thesis: ‘To what extent did the Navy League influence popular naval enthusiasm between 1894-1914?’. Awarded the British Commission for Maritime Prize for ‘outstanding dissertation on maritime subjects’ for Undergraduate dissertations 2015

Academic Publications:

Burkinshaw, L., ‘Some of These Things are True, and Some of Them Lies. But They are All Good Stories’: The Historical Fiction of Hilary Mantel’, in R. Bradford (ed.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature. Vol 1, 311-322. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2021.
Burkinshaw, L. 2019. ‘Churchill’s Thin Grey Line: British Merchant Ships at War 1939–1945’. International Journal of Maritime History. 31 (4), 929–930

Recent Talks

‘Small boys wore sailor suits’, British popular naval enthusiasm between 1895 and 1939- British Commission for Maritime History New Researcher Conference. 2019
‘Beyond Jutland: Submarines, Q-Ships and the Dover Patrol’-Great War 100 public history conference- (partnered with The Western Front Association and Herts at War).