Jacob Harris

I am a social historian of twentieth-century Britain and Europe. I completed my BA (2020) and MA (2021) degrees at UEA, during which I earned the following prizes: Kristopher Harper Prize for History 2017/18; Prize for Distinguished Performance in Year 2 Assessment 2018/19; The Medici Prize 2019/20; and the Prize for Distinguished Performance in Year 3 Assessment 2019/20. Between 2021 and 2024 I maintained my affiliation with UEA as a Visiting Researcher, and am now undertaking CHASE-funded doctoral research in the School of History.

My primary research interest is historic automobility. I seek to understand the meanings, emotions and lived experiences that were mediated through the automobile in the past. My research deals with numerous key themes in British and European social history, highlighting that the automobile was (and remains) more than just a mechanical technology. I am also interested in post-war social and cultural change, particularly during the 'affluent society' of the 1950s and 1960s, and more generally in the history of the ordinary, everyday and banal. My most recent paper won the Journal of Transport History's John Scholes Prize, and in 2022 I accepted an invitation to share my research with undergraduates at Indiana State University.

My doctoral research project, provisionally titled 'Youth, Emotions and Automobility in Post-War Britain, 1955-2000', explores the intersection of automobility and youth culture in the second half of the twentieth century.