Participant Info
- First Name
- Melanie
- Last Name
- Holihead
- Country
- United Kingdom
- State
- melanie.holihead@gmail.com
- Affiliation
- Website URL
- Keywords
- Women's history, naval history, social history, local history, maritime community, naval women, Portsmouth, lower-deck Royal Navy sailors, naval wives
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
Former local government senior manager, independent management consultant and Undiplomatic Bag, now bringing to light the previously hidden history of ‘the female half of the naval community as a whole: not the minority of women who went to sea, but the wives and mothers who stayed at home, bringing up small children, earning their living as best they might while their menfolk were at sea, enduring years of absence and uncertainty. They represent an enormous void of ignorance, and our knowledge of the social history of the Navy will never be complete until someone fills it’ (N.A.M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: a naval history of Britain, 1649-1815 (London, 2004), p.407.)
MSc and D.Phil. University of Oxford (2011, 2018), supervised by N.A.M. Rodger. Thesis: ‘Their allotted place: social conditions, survival strategies and comparative respectability among naval wives in mid-nineteenth century Portsea Island.’
- Recent Publications
‘Cut Adrift or Towed Astern: sailors’ wives in mid-nineteenth century Portsea Island considered in perspective’ (Journal of Maritime Research 17(2):155-168 · November 2015) DOI:10.1080/21533369.2015.1094985
- Media Coverage
- Social Media
- @MMR_Holihead
- Country Focus
- United Kingdom
- Expertise by Geography
- United Kingdom
- Expertise by Chronology
- 19th century
- Expertise by Topic
- Family, Military, Women
