Dr Nadine Leese

This guide was commissioned for Sage Research Methods: Doing Research Online (2022). It explains the varied reasons that might compel you to start a research blog, from building research communities to developing research in progress, reaching out to nonacademic audiences, and communicating your research more creatively. It then helps you determine your target audience(s), be they […]

Please click here to access the final version of this article, published by Oxford University Press in the Journal of Victorian Culture on 10 November 2020. Below you can find a pdf of the the Accepted Manuscript of the article.  Abstract The death of a husband had adverse economic effects for the majority of Victorian women, but […]

On Armistice Day 2019, Will Davies visited us at the first ever exhibition of the War Widows’ Quilt at The Queen’s House, Greenwich, where it was installed from 7-11 November 2019. Will spoke to representatives of the War Widows’ Association who had contributed to the quilt, as well as to lead artist Lois Blackburn […]

Made by John Felix, this film tells the story of the War Widows' Quilt, a moving, important new memorial to the lives of Britain's war widows. Made from armed forces shirts by over ninety war widows and their family members, this beautiful and moving piece of art tells many individual stories of love, loss, and grief while also shining a light on the ongoing history of war widowhood in the UK.

On 9 November 2019, the Daily Express devoted a double-page spread to the first-ever exhibition of the War Widows’ Quilt at the Queen’s House, Greenwich. Giles Sheldrick, Chief Reporter, interviewed women who contributed to the quilt, representatives of our partner organisation The War Widows’ Association of Great Britain, lead artist Lois Blackburn, and me […]

On Sunday, 11 November 2018, after the two-minute silence at 11.00AM, you’ll be able to listen to a feature on women and war that I recorded for BBC Radio Scotland’s Sunday Morning with … . Presented by Ricky Ross, the feature is a conversation between Ricky, Christine Morgan, who’s son Marc was killed by […]

War Widows’ Stories captures the lives of war’s forgotten women past and present through oral history, participatory arts, public events, and archival research. The British public commonly imagine war widows to be elderly women who lost their husbands as a result of active combat in the Second World War, surrounded and supported by family, friends, the armed forces, and the state. While this appl…

I have been awarded one of the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Leadership Fellows grants. Centred around War Widows’ Stories and starting in September 2018, the Fellowship will allow me to substantially develop the project through further research on the history of war and by continuing my work with the war widows’ community and museums in an effort to raise public awareness of the…

  I’m excited to announce that I’ve been selected for one of the British Academy’s Rising Star Engagement Awards (BARSEA). These awards are granted to “some of the most promising and talented academics in the UK” and “are designed to encourage wider engagement with the humanities and social sciences within and beyond academia”. With an application en…

Researching your prospective employer is key to any good job application and interview. I've collated three key tips that will give you the edge over those who simply stick to departmental websites.

On 11 November 2016, Mary Moreland and I launched the Heritage Lottery Funded project War Widows’ Stories live on Woman’s Hour. We were given eight star-struck minutes with BBC Radio 4’s Jenni Murray, and you can listen to the result below via BBC iPlayer. It’s needless to say I was so excited about being able […]

I’m really pleased to say that I’ve been awarded my first external grant since my PhD. It’s not exactly news anymore by now, but last semester was so busy that I just couldn’t find the time to record things as they were happening. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years thinking […]

I was invited to write this piece for the Times Higher Education blog, where it was originally published on 26 June 2016 under the title “‘I’m scared’: German academic in the UK on the Brexit vote”. You can read the original post here, and it is reproduced word for word, without alterations, below.  I am an immigrant. […]

Get the popcorn, and dim the lights … Ok, maybe not. But if you had 5 minutes to watch my BBC Arts film on deviant Victorian widows (and why they could be so dangerous!), I’d be very honoured and humbled. I had great fun making it, and am much more pleased with the result than I thought I […]

I’m excited to have been asked to deliver two workshops for PhD students and early-career researchers at the University of Exeter: one on how to strategically develop your CV in the pursuit of an academic career, the other on how social media can act as a useful tool academic career development. If you’d like to […]

I have struggled with mental health most of my adult life. There, I said it. I am a human being, one who has worked all of my life, gained two degrees, has lots of friends, and a good family. Looking in from the outside, I appear to be well-rounded, a tad eccentric, enthusiastic, caring, with […]

As part of my role as one of this year’s New Generation Thinkers, I’ve recorded an edition of BBC Radio 3’s The Essay! “Women on Their Own: Widows in Britain, Now & Then” will be broadcast on 11 November 2015 at 10.45PM, and you can listen anytime after this by visiting BBC iPlayer. [iframe http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ns10j 900 […]

I remember being a young teenager and hesitatingly explaining from my school desk why – uncharacteristically – I hadn’t produced any homework. It was my favourite lesson on a subject that held such fascination for me that it would later become the focus of my academic work. All I could say was that my family had had […]

From the day I launched The New Academic in 2012 to the moment I’m writing this post, my website has had 120,000+ visitors, and its number of monthly visitors has reached almost 7,000. It’s not much by some people’s standards, but it’s a whole lot more than I ever thought it would be. Its content […]

It’s official: I’ve been lucky enough to have been selected as one of this year’s New Generation Thinkers by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. And of course this wouldn’t be my blog if I didn’t share a few lines on the process that led to last week’s melodramatically long-embargoed announcement […]