Research in urban history: a review of recent theses

This review consists of a broad, uncritical survey of recent unpublished doctoral theses. Unlike previous years, where a mixture of British and non-British dissertations have been discussed, this year all the studies under consideration were completed at British universities, mostly in 1995. As before, the theses mentioned were chosen because of their focus on aspects of urban historical research, whilst the short descriptions are based on the abstracts published in the Aslib Index to Theses [ASLIB]. Urban history, or research with a strong urban bias, would appear to be in a healthy state in Britain and there was no shortage of studies to choose from, a total of thirty-nine receiving attention in this report. This focus on recent research in one country provides the opportunity to take stock and make some observations about current trends as well as allowing comparisons to be drawn with previous years where there is both continuity and evidence of change. To complement this focus on Britain, the next report will assess the state of urban history research outside the United Kingdom, and especially in North America.