Matthew Connor Martin is a social and cultural historian of Britain and a PhD researcher in the Department of War Studies at King's College London, where he also teaches as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. His doctoral research, supervised by Professor Juliette Pattinson and Dr Sorana-Cristina Jude, recovers intimacy between men on the Western Front during the First World War, alongside a connected project on same-sex relationships among women in the WAAF.

His wider research asks how ordinary people experienced, felt and made sense of crisis, drawing on history from below, queer theory, the history of emotions and theories of ontological security. It spans three strands: intimacy, sexuality and the emotional life of war; gender, power and performance; and catastrophe and everyday life. His work ranges from the Anarchy of the twelfth century to Restoration London and the world wars.

Matthew is Editor of The Historian, the Historical Association's principal magazine, and an A-Level History examiner for AQA. He writes narrative history for general readers, with books on plague and fire in Restoration London, Henry VIII and the queens of the Anarchy forthcoming with Pen & Sword. Before returning to research, he spent eight years in senior education leadership, including curriculum design, teacher training and safeguarding.

Research Interests 

1. Intimacy, sexuality and the emotional life of war
   
   My core research strand examines how intimacy, desire and emotional attachment were lived, regulated and remembered in modern British warfare. My PhD recovers male-to-male intimacy in the trenches of the Western Front, reading letters, diaries and material culture against histories of masculinity and queer theory. A co-authored article, Women Under the Balloons, extends this to female homosociality and same-sex relationships in WAAF barrage balloon units during the Second World War. Related work theorises intimacy as constitutive of modern warfare (Intimate Frontlines) and reads Rosa Luxemburg’s wartime prison letters as a record of emotional and political resistance to war.
   
   2. Gender, power and performance
   
   A second strand asks how power was embodied and performed through gender, particularly at moments when authority was contested. My book on Henry VIII reads his kingship through the lens of performative masculinity, bringing concepts developed in the history of modern war and sexuality to bear on the Tudor court. My work on the Anarchy (1135–1154) examines queenship and women’s political agency through four queens at the centre of a succession crisis, alongside shorter work reappraising King Stephen’s reign and the life of Margaret Pole.
   
   3. Catastrophe, crisis and everyday life
   
   A third strand explores the everyday experience of catastrophe and the social psychology of crisis. Blaze and Turmoil reconstructs how Londoners lived through the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, with related work on panic, rumour and magistracy during the Fire. In a modern register, Living in the Dark examines energy insecurity and the household in wartime through the framework of ontological security, connecting historical and contemporary experiences of how ordinary people make home amid disruption.

Teaching

• Seminar Leader for History of Modern War