Projects per year
Personal profile
Biography
Prof Karen Sayer is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the HEA. Her research focus is on the rural, that is conceptualisations of rural communities, landscapes and environments; human and animal relations in agricultural work and on the farm; labour in field, farm and home; the interior spaces of farmhouse and cottage, as represented, worked and lived.
Within the Leeds Centre of Victorian Studies and it's wider networks, she draws on material culture, illustration and text to work on Victorian social and cultural history of landscapes of marginal spaces and experiences, e.g. nocturnal landscapes of waterways, rivers and coastlines, material technologies of sight and sound, cultures of light and illumination, the aesthetics and material cultures of hearing loss.
She works closely with artists, heritage providers and museums at the national level such as the LastStation art project, the Museum of English Rural Life, and others in the region such as the Thackray Medical Museum. She has delivered public lectures to these and also the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford, has been intervuiewed a number of times for BBC Radio 4, and has acted as a consultant and interviewee on social and domestic history with researchers at Lion TV and Betty.
She has served as Treasurer of the British Association for Victorian Studies (2000-2006) and is currently an executive committee member of the British Agricultural History Society.
She is the Museum of English Rural Life Gwyn E. Jones’ Fellow on ‘Rural Boundaries: the control of rats and mice in British agriculture c. 1800-2001’.
Research interests
Prof Sayer is currently working on a monograph for Routledge, Farm Animals in Britain, 1850-2001, an environmental and cultural history project focused on farming, which addresses the changing social spaces inhabited by the farmed animal. It addresses the cultural understanding and representation of the farmed animal, as well as farming methods, and the changing spaces of the farm in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
She has just published, with co-editors Paul Brassley and Jeremy Burchardt, Transforming the Countryside: the electrification of rural Britain (Routledge, 2017). This addresses the infrastructure, promotion, value of and reponses to rural electrification in Britain, with comparative chapters on Canada and Sweden, and raises questions about the demand for, use and reception of electrification in rural communities, and by those determined to preserve Britain's rural heritage.
Reading the material culture of objects helds by the Thackray Medical museum, Leeds, she is also collaborating on Managing the Experience of Hearing Loss, 1830-1950 (Palgrave, in press) with Prof Graeme Gooday, Professor of the History of Science and Technology, School of Philosophy, religion and History, at the University of Leeds. This addresses the circulation of knowledges about adult 'deafness' in the Victorian period and twentieth-century Britain until just after the First World War, and seeks to recover the histories of those who experience hearing loss through the histories of those technologies suppoed to 'correct' it.
Prof Sayer is a Fellow of the HEA, and her research has included critical pedagogic work on issues of ‘race’ and diversity within history; has contributed to a pedagogic workshop on concepts of class; and has published a case study on the value and use of student reflection.
Teaching and Administration
Service:
Department of Humanities: Research Lead History
School Of Arts and Communication Academic Member of University-level Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee
University Impact and Public Engagement Champion
Modules taught within BA (hons) History include:
Special Subject: Victorian Countryside
Presenting the Past: Public Histories and Popular Presentations of the Past
Dissertations and Research Reports
Modules taught within MA Victorian Studies include:
Nature and Environment
Dissertations and Research Reports
Education/Academic qualification
Doctor of Philosophy, University of Sussex
Award Date: 1 Jun 1992
Bachelor of Arts, Portsmouth Polytechnic
Award Date: 1 Jun 1988
External positions
External Examiner, Ba (Hons) History, Bath Spa University
1 Sept 2016 → 31 Aug 2020
External Examiner, MA Humanities, Nottingham Trent University
1 Sept 2016 → 31 Aug 2019
Keywords
- D History (General)
- Sustainability
- Agricultural history
- Environmental history
- Rural history
Fingerprint
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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years
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Towards agri-system thinking: an integrated approach to problems of modern livestock production
Sayer, K. & Woods, A.
1/08/15 → …
Project: Research
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Rural Boundaries: the control of rats and mice in British agriculture c. 1800-2001
1/09/14 → 31/08/15
Project: Research
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Cultivating Community: Women and Agricultural Fairs in Ontario. Jodey Nurse
Sayer, K., 2023, In: Canadian Historical Review. 104, 3, p. 441-443 3 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review
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Finding women in the history of lighting: energy boundaries in the English home, 1815-1900
Sayer, K., 15 Jul 2021, In a new light: histories of women and energy. Sandwell, R. & Harrison-Moore, A. (eds.). McGill-Queen's University PressResearch output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter › peer-review
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Alun Howkins, 1947–2018: introduction
Sayer, K. & Verdon, N., 22 Feb 2020, In: History. 104, p. 819-828 10 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Foreword
Sayer, K., Mar 2020, Disability and the Victorians: attitudes, interventions, legacies. Hutchison, I., Atherton, M. & Virdi, J. (eds.). Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. xii-xv 4 p. (Disability History).Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Foreword/postscript › peer-review
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The changing landscape of ‘labour’: work and livestock in post-Second World War British agriculture
Sayer, K., 20 Feb 2020, In: History. 104, 363, p. 911-940 30 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open AccessFile1 Citation (Scopus)61 Downloads (Pure)
Activities
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Victorian Transformations Conference 2023
Jane de Gay (Organiser) & Karen Sayer (Organiser)
24 May 2023 → 25 May 2023Activity: Attending or organising conference/seminar/workshop › Conference
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Rural History Conference 2021
Karen Sayer (Invited speaker), Oliver Douglas (Speaker), Debra Reid (Speaker) & Peter Watson (Speaker)
Jun 2022Activity: Attending or organising conference/seminar/workshop › Conference
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Rural History Conference 2021
Karen Sayer (Invited speaker), Richard W. Hoyle (Speaker) & Carin Martiin (Speaker)
Jun 2022Activity: Attending or organising conference/seminar/workshop › Conference
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‘The view from the land, disease control through the built spaces of British Agriculture 1947-1980’
Karen Sayer (Invited speaker)
4 Nov 2022Activity: Invited talk/public lecture/debate
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Rural History Conference 2021
Karen Sayer (Invited speaker), Katherine Jellison (Speaker), Cherisse Jones-Branch (Speaker), Grey Osterud (Speaker), Margreet van der Burg (Speaker) & Jeannie Whayne (Speaker)
Jun 2022Activity: Attending or organising conference/seminar/workshop › Conference
Press/Media
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Interviewed for James Wong's Alternative Country Garden on BBC Radio 4
15/09/16
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Expert Comment
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Interviewed for BBC Radio 3 'Nightwaves' on country cottages
1/01/00
1 item of Media coverage
Press/Media: Expert Comment