Tamson Pietsch

Tamson Pietsch is Lecturer in Imperial and Colonial History. Her research interests encompass the cultural and intellectual history of Britain and its Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. Specifically her work examines the social and institutional structures that underpinned the creation of knowledge in this period. To date she has focused on universities, but new projects also explore travel at sea and the idea of 'global education'. Tamson has published in the Journal of Global History, the Journal of Historical Geography and the History of Education and her first book, Universities and Empire: Academic Networks and the British World, 1880-1939, will appear with Manchester University Press in 2012. 

Tamson is a graduate of the University of Adelaide and received her DPhil from the University of Oxford where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar. She was previously the Sir Christopher Cox Junior Fellow at New College, Lecturer at Corpus Christi College and convener of the Transnational and Global History Seminar at the University of Oxford, where she remains an Associate Member of the Faculty of History.

Research Interests

The history of Britain and its empire in the 19th and 20th centuries; global and transnational history; the history of ideas; mobility and space; ships and the sea.

Publications

Journal Papers

(2011) Pietsch, T., Many Rhodes: Travelling scholarships and imperial citizenship in the British academic world, 1880-1940, History of Education 40 (6)

(2010) Pietsch, T., A British sea: making sense of global space in the late nineteenth century, Journal of Global History 5 (3) : 423- 446

(2010) Pietsch, T., Wandering scholars? Academic mobility and the British World, 1850-1940, Journal of Historical Geography 36 (4) : 377- 387

Book Chapters

(2013) Pietsch, T., Out of Empire: The Universities’ Bureau and the Congresses of the Universities of the British Empire, 1913-1939. In: Schreuder, D. ed. Universities for a ‘New World’: A Commonwealth of Knowledge and Skills, 1913-2013. Sage

(2012) Pietsch, T., Mending a broken world: universities and the nation, 1917-1936. In: Beers, L. and Thomas, G. eds. Brave New World: Imperial and Democratic Nation-building in Britain between the Wars. London : Institute of Historical Research

(2011) Pietsch, T., Between the Nation and the World: J.T. Wilson and scientific networks in the early twentieth century British World’. In: Bennett, B. and Hodge, J. eds. Science and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science in the British Empire 1850-1970. Palgrave Macmillan