Dr Marcus Morris
Dr Marcus Morris
Deputy Head of Department
My profile
Biography
I am the Deputy Head of Department, researching a number of aspects of British and European history in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I have always been passionate about my subject and feel lucky to be able to research and teach that passion. Through my teaching I hope to inspire, inform, and hopefully get students (and other researchers) to question long-held assumptions, to develop their understanding of different topics, and to think about the world around them, particularly their past, in different ways.
I studied for my BA (2005), MA (2006) and PhD (2011), all in history, at Lancaster University, and have taught here at Manchester Met in one capacity or another since 2009.
Interests and expertise
I have acted in a number of education leadership roles in my time Manchester Met. I am currently the Deputy Head of Department. I have also been the History Programme Leader, the Combined Honours Subject Leader for History, the Schools’ Liaison Coordinator and the Employability Coordinator for History. I have also sat on a number of faculty and university panels, including academic standards and academic appeals and complaints. Partly in recognition of these roles, I became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2016.
In relation to research, I was the lead for the War, Conflict and Society Research Group within the History Research Centre. Externally, I have reviewed for the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire; Routledge; Historical Research; International Labor and Working-Class History; and Taylor and Francis. I am also on the editorial board of the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.
Projects
Young People and the First World War - AHRC First World War Public Engagemen Centre (Voices of War and Peace - University of Birmingham) funded project working with local youth groups assessing the impact of the First World War on young people in the Greater Manchester area.
I am heavily involved in the department’s Widening Particpation and School’s Outreach initiatives. I have delivered a number of sessions (classes, workshops, lectures) for students from a number of local schools.
Teaching
Learning is a personal thing, but it is also a shared experience and this is central to my teaching. We learn from one another, it is a two-way process, and that’s what we’ll do in our classes. I hope classes will also be fun and engaging, but it’s also important we develop skills that can be used beyond the classroom. It is also important for me to get students questioning their assumptions, their ways of looking at the world, and to think about the past in different ways.
I teach across the undergraduate and postgraduate courses we offer here at Manchester Met. I contribute to most of the core units, a number of optional units and run my own third-year unit, ‘A People’s War? Britain’s Domestic Experiences in the Second World War’.
Supervision
I supervise a number of research students to completion across a number of topic areas including: socialist organisations in Britain; British music hall; propaganda and the First World War; and British disabled ex-servicemen and the First World War.
I am currently principal supervisor for the following PhD students:
Alexander Davy, ‘Exploitation, Domination, Cultural Genocide, or Genocide? Motivations and Influences behind Imperial Britain’s Implementation of Ecocide, 1870-1914’
Tobin O’Connor, ‘The Internal Identity of the Labour Party’
Jonathan Harper, ‘The Forgotten Front: The Civilian Resettlement Units, A triumph of community – 1943-1946’
Jemma Lakmaker, ‘The Social Integration of Ex-Servicemen with Military Induced Hearing Loss, Post-1914’
Nicola Smith, ‘Disability, Charity, and the Hierarchy of First World War Ex-Servicemen in Lancashire, 1914-25’
Anna Wright, ‘The supporters and benefactors of the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM): musical patronage and philanthropy in Manchester, 1891–1920’
I welcome proposals from students on the social, political and cultural histories of Britain and Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Research outputs
My work focuses on a variety of historical approaches, including labour, social, cultural, political and imperial histories, as well as taking an interdisciplinary approach. In my research I interrogate issues of class, race and empire, nationalism and internationalism, industrial relations, domestic and international politics, and Marxist theory.
My main current research project looks at the rhetoric of internationalism and British and European socialists (especially those in the Second International) in the years preceding the First World War. I am focusing in particular on how such rhetoric reflected reality, especially in the context of growing military tension, the subsequent arms race, collective calls for peace and the outbreak of conflict, especially in 1914.
I am also working on a number of other publications, which look at various aspects of labour and socialist history, and British history more generally.
Online Publications:
M. Morris, ‘Manchester’s Voices of Peace’, Voices of War and Peace: AHRC Engagement Centre, 3 November 2014. http://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org/portfolio/manchesters-voices-of-peace/
M. Morris, ‘‘The first chapter’: Magna Carta and British socialism’s struggle for freedom in late Victorian and
Edwardian Britain’, Great Charter Convention Series, Politics in Spires,Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, 23 April 2015. http://politicsinspires.org/the-first-chapter-magna-carta-and-british-socialisms-struggle-for-freedom-in-late-victorian-and-edwardian-britain/
Also published at openDemocracy:
M. Morris, ‘‘Girls Who Would Fight’: Young Women and the Call to Arms’, Voices of War and Peace: AHRC Engagement Centre, 14 June 2017. http://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org/portfolio/girls-who-would-fight/
M.Morris, ‘Being Young: Understanding Young People’s Experiences in the First World War’, AHRC WW1 Engagement Centre Blog, 10 May 2018. http://beyondthetrenches.co.uk/
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Books (authored/edited/special issues)
Morris, M. (2020) Histories, Memories and Representations of being Young in the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan.
Edwards, S., Morris, M.B. (2018) The Legacy of Thomas Paine in the Transatlantic World. Routledge.
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Chapters in books
Morris, M. (2023) 'Sartorial subversion and the House of Commons: political identities, meanings and the responses to MPs' dress, c. 1850-1914.' In Morrison, K.A. (ed.) Political and sartorial styles: Britain and its colonies in the long nineteenth century. Manchester University Press,
Morris, M. (2023) 'Making Martyrs: Contested histories and the British labour and Socialist movements’ commemoration of the Dorchester labourers.' Memory and Modern British Politics: Commemoration, Tradition, Legacy. pp. 217-234.
Andrews, M., Fleming, N.C., Morris, M. (2020) 'Introduction.' Histories, Memories and Representations of being Young in the First World War. pp. 1-7.
Morris, M. (2020) '‘Girls Who Would Fight’: Young Women and the Call to Arms During the First World War.' Histories, Memories and Representations of being Young in the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan,
Morris, M. (2019) 'Between Workers and Soldiers: The Relationship between the Labour Party and Ex-servicemen after the First World War.' Veterans of the First World War: Ex-Servicemen and Ex-Servicewomen in Post-War Britain and Ireland. Routledge,
Morris, M.B. (2018) ''The Way We Are': Class and Britishness on Film.' Histories on Screen The Past and Present in Anglo-American Cinema and Television. Bloomsbury Publishing,
Morris, M. (2018) 'Peace, but not at any price: British socialists' calls for peace on the eve of World War One.' Labour, British radicalism and the First World War. Manchester University Press,
Morris, M. (2017) '"The Neglect of Paine Seems Particularly Strange at the Present Political Juncture": Explaining British Socialists’ Relationship to Paine, c. 1884-1914.' The Legacy of Thomas Paine in the Transatlantic World. Routledge,
Edwards, S.R., Morris, M. (2017) 'Introduction: The use and abuse of Thomas Paine in the Transatlantic World.' The Legacy of Thomas Paine in the Transatlantic World.
Morris, M.B. (2016) 'Class, performance and socialist politics: the political campaigns of early labour leaders.' Politics Performance Popular Culture. Manchester University Press,
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Internet publications
Morris, M.B. (2017) ‘Girls Who Would Fight’: Young Women and the Call to Arms. http://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org/portfolio/girls-who-would-fight/.
Morris, M.B. (2015) Magna Carta and British socialism’s struggle for freedom in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/marcus-morris/first-chapter-magna-carta-and-british-socialism%E2%80%99s-struggle-for-freedom-in-l.
Morris, M.B. (2014) Manchester’s Voices of Peace. http://www.voicesofwarandpeace.org/portfolio/manchesters-voices-of-peace/.
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Journal articles
Morris, M.B. (2018) 'The general strike as a weapon of peace: British socialists, the labour movement and debating the means to avoid war before 1914.' Labour History Review, 83(1) pp. 29-53.
Morris, M. (2015) '‘The Most Respectable Looking of Revolutionaries’: Sartorial Identities, Class and the Politics of Appearance in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain.' Cultural and Social History, 12(3) pp. 315-330.
Morris, M. (2014) 'From anti-colonialism to anti-imperialism: The evolution of H. M. Hyndman's critique of empire, c.1875-1905.' Historical Research, 87(236) pp. 293-314.
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Non-peer reviewed articles / reviews
Morris, M. Ralph Darlington. Labour Revolt in Britain 1910–14 London: Pluto Press, 2023. Pp. 336. £19.99 (paper)..
Morris, M. (2017) Transnational radicalism and the connected lives of Tom Mann and Robert Samuel Ross.
Morris, M. (2015) Labour and the Caucus: Working-Class Radicalism and Organised Liberalism in England, 1868-1888.
Morris, M., Edwards, S. (2014) Citizen of the world: The use and abuse of thomas paine, people's history museum, Manchester, 29-30 november 2013.