Professor Mo Moulton

Professor Mo Moulton

Department of History
Professor of Modern British and Irish History

Contact details

I study the social and cultural history of Britain, Ireland, and the British Empire in the late 19th and 20th centuries. I'm interested in the origins of modern ideas about race, gender, family, and national identity. Those questions have led to me write about a range of topics, including the Irish in Britain, queer history, and the co-operative movement. I'm currently working on an intellectual history of kinship. At the heart of all my historical work is the way people remake their own worlds through activism, art, and experiments in living

Qualifications

  • PhD, Brown University, 2010
  • A.M., Brown University, 2005
  • S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2001

Biography

After studying history at MIT (a surprising but happy choice), I worked in the non-profit sector, mainly on campaign financing, in San Francisco and New York. I earned a PhD, funded in part by the SSRC and a Mellon grant, from Brown University under the supervision of Professor Deborah Cohen. From 2010 to 2016, I taught at Harvard University鈥檚 History and Literature program.

Teaching

At the undergraduate level, I teach 'Gross Indecency to Gay Marriage: Gender and Sexual Minorities 1885 to the present' and Practising History.

Postgraduate supervision

I welcome queries from prospective MRes, MA by Research, and PhD students. I'm interested in supervising projects on:
* twentieth-century Irish social history
* British or Irish queer history
* global histories of cooperatives or other collectives / alternative economic forms

Past PhD projects supervised include:
- Shahmima Akhtar, 鈥溾楢 public display of its own capabilities and resources鈥: a cultural history of Irish identity on display, 1851-2015.鈥
- Martha Robinson Rhodes, 鈥淏isexuality and Multiple-Gender-Attraction in Britain, 1970-1990: A Queer Oral History.鈥


Find out more - our PhD History  page has information about doctoral research at the University 麻豆精选.

Research

I research the social and cultural history of Britain and Ireland in the 20th century. I study collectives and communities: how people understand themselves as part of a nation, part of a subculture, or part of a cooperative, for example. I use the frameworks of queer history and postcolonial theory to study the past and to think about how it relates to our present-day preoccupations.

I'm currently working on a micro-history of Irish cooperative creameries - which I think have a lot to reveal about the stories we tell about twentieth-century capitalism. I'm also pursuing a side-project into why, and with what consequences, 'chosen family' became central to modern queer communities.

I'm interested in supervising PhD projects on:
* twentieth-century Irish social history
* British or Irish queer history
* global histories of cooperatives or other collectives / alternative economic forms

Publications

Recent publications

Book

Moulton, M 2019, . 1st edn, Corsair, London . <>

Moulton, M 2014, . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Article

Moulton, M 2024, '', History of the Family.

Moulton, M 2023, '', History Workshop Journal.

Moulton, M 2022, '', Journal of Global History, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 418-437.

Moulton, M 2017, '', Irish Economic and Social History, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 85-101.

Moulton, M, Delaney, E, de Nie, M & O'Neill, C 2016, '', Eire-Ireland; a journal of Irish studies, vol. 51, no. 1&2, pp. 266-277.

Moulton, M 2013, '', Journal of British Studies, pp. 179-204.

Chapter

Moulton, M 2022, . in E Baigent (ed.), The Centenary of Degrees for Women at Oxford Unviersity. History of Universities Series, Oxford University Press.

Moulton, M 2020, . in A Blin, S Gacon, F Jarrige & X Vigna (eds), L'utopie au jour le jour: Une histoire des experiences cooperatives (XIXe-XXIe siecle). Arbre Bleu editions, Paris.

Moulton, M 2013, . in B Lewis (ed.), British Queer History: New Approaches and Perspectives. Manchester University Press, Manchester, pp. 63-86.