Dr Richard Ansell
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Overview
Overview
Biography
I am a postdoctoral researcher on the Leverhulme Trust project 'Written Worlds: Non-Elite Writing in 17th-Century England'. More generally, I听am interested in听the social and cultural history of travel in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I studied at Cambridge, Brown and Oxford and have researched and taught at Oxford, York, Leicester and Maynooth.
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Research
Research
Research overview
My work on the Written Worlds project involves finding and analysing听non-elite writing relating to travel and encounter.
I recently published an edition of four travel journals by eighteenth-century domestic servants, 听(Oxford: British Academy / OUP, 2024), in the British Academy's Records of Social and Economic History series.
My first monograph, 听(Oxford: British Academy / OUP, 2022), was the result of my British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Leicester. It moves beyond worn stereotypes of the 'Grand Tour', relating travel to broader questions of upbringing, identity, social mobility and elite formation.
More recently, I co-wrote an open-access book with Rosemary Sweet, 听(London: UCL Press, 2025).
I have also published articles on , and 听(open access).
(Both of my British Academy / OUP books are now distributed by Liverpool University Press.)