Josh completed his PhD student within the Department of War Studies in 2025, and holds an MA in the History of War from KCL, for which he was awarded a distinction. Josh has appeared on BBC Radio Berkshire talking about his research on the Dambusters Raid (1943), and has published three monographs on the German Army in the First World War with Pen & Sword Books.

Josh works as a defence consultant and has also taught on several undergraduate modules, one of which earned him a nomination for a Teaching Excellence Award.

Josh has also taught on the BA modules 5SSW2055 War in the Twentieth Century and 4SSW1003 The Experience of War, for which he was nominated for a teaching excellence award (2020/21).

Research Interests

• First World War
• Masculinity
• Gender
• British Army
• Conscription
• Military Identity

Thesis Title: 'Combed out': the military identities of British conscripts on the Western Front, 1916–1919

Abstract

British infantrymen who joined the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in the latter half of the First World War remain poorly understood, underrepresented and generally denigrated within the Anglophone historiography. Drawing on their personal testimony as well as a range of other sources, this thesis redresses this lacuna by analysing the various layers that constituted their military identity. It reveals that these men were shaped as much by their personal motivation (‘self-interests’) as they were their membership of different social groups and the military environment in which these existed. Group membership was the foundational basis for how they interpreted the milieu of the Western Front; the dynamics between groups they belonged to emphasising and confirming their position within the British army’s hierarchal structure.

Supervisors

Professor William Philpott (first supervisor)

Publications

Peer-reviewed

Joshua Bilton, "I am not going to be put with anybody": Social class, occupation and its influence on ‘late-war’ British infantrymen’s sense of belonging in the London Regiment, 1916–1918', in C. Fair, R. Hendry and T. Thorpe (eds.), London Pride: The London Territorial Force in Peace and War, 1908-1921, Vol. II (Warwick: Helion & Company Ltd, 2026).

Book Reviews

Tim Bowman, William Butler and Michael Wheatley, The Disparity of Recruitment to the British Armed Forces, 1914–1918 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020). Reviewed by Josh Bilton, in Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 99(399), Winter 2021.

Christopher Phillips, Civilians Specialists at War: Britain’s Transport Experts and the First World War (London: University of London, 2020). Reviewed by Josh Bilton, in British Journal of Military History, 7(3), Nov 2021.