DDH and History alumnus Luke Blaxill elected to Junior Research Fellowship

Dr Luke Blaxill, the first student co-supervised by the Departments of Digital Humanities and History has been elected to a Draper's Company Junior Research Fellowship in History at Hertford College Oxford. Tenure is 3 years starting in October 2013, and is stipendiary. Dr Blaxill will be researching the language of British electoral politics during the fellowship, focussing especially on the interwar period.

Dr Blaxill started his PhD in 2006, and was the first student co-supervised by the departments of History and the Digital Humanities. His primary supervisor was Dr Paul Readman, secondary supervisor Professor Willard McCarty. His thesis, in modern British Political History, is titled 'The Language of British Electoral Politics, 1880-1910'. He passed his viva in Summer 2012.

He has articles in Parliamentary History (2011) 'Electioneering, the Third Reform Act, and Political Change in the 1880s', and Historical Research (2013) 'Quantifying the Language of British Politics, 1880-1914'. He also co-wrote a chapter ('Edwardian By-Elections' in the edited collection By-Elections in British Politics, 1832-1914 with Dr Paul Readman.

Dr Blaxill's PhD was also notable for his success in obtaining funding from numerous obscure and often eccentric charities and trusts. He won over 40 such awards throughout his course, and turned this experience into a best-selling book, The Alternative Guide to Postgraduate Funding , which has sold over 250,000 copies.