Academic staff

Modules taught

Undergraduate

• U67505 Disunited Kingdoms
• U67531 Crime and Punishment in 19th Century Britain
• U67532 Jack the Ripper and the Victorian Underworld
• U67527 Witchcraft and Magic in Early Modern Europe
• U67560 Murder, Mayhem, Modernity - Crime in 20th century Britain and America
• U67580 Primary Sources

Postgraduate

• Religion, Doubt and Secularism in Victorian England
• Crime and Punishment

Radicalism in Britain, blasphemy, the history of religion and the cultural history of law and crime.

Research interests

Blasphemy, history of shame, blame and culpability, links between religion and crime, history of secularisation, history of radicalism and the affinities all these have with cultural history.

Research projects

Immediate research projects

Completing monograph (with Anne-Marie Kilday) 'Shame and Modernity' for Palgrave Publishing

Forthcoming projects

Also researching for a project on the relationship between Religion and Law since 1600 and an extension of the 'Stories of Belief' project to now include secular stories of unbelief.

Books

• Kilday A-M, Nash DS, Ed., Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700: Micro-Studies in the History of Crime, Bloomsbury (2017)
  ISBN: 9781472585271 eISBN: 9781472585295 (epub)
  Abstract Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700 explores the potential for the 'micro-study' approach to the history of crime and legal history. A selection of in-depth narrative micro-studies are featured to illustrate specific issues associated with the theme of crime and the law in historical context. The methodology used unpacks the wider historiographical and contextual issues related to each thematic area and facilitates discussion of the wider implications for the history of crime and social relations. The case studies in the volume cover a range of incidents relating to crime, law and deviant behaviour since 1700, from policing vice in Victorian London to chain gang narratives from the southern United States. The book concludes by demonstrating how these narratives can be brought together to produce a more nuanced history of the area and suggests avenues for future research and study.Website 
• Kilday A-M, Nash DS, Shame and Modernity in Britain: 1890 to the present, Palgrave (2017)
  ISBN: 9780230359338 eISBN: 9781137319197
  Abstract This book argues that traditional images and practices associated with shame did not recede with the coming of modern Britain. Following the authors' acclaimed and successful nineteenth century book, Cultures of Shame, this new monograph moves forward to look at shame in the modern era. As such, it investigates how social and cultural expectations in both war and peace, changing attitudes to sexual identities and sexual behaviour, new innovations in media and changing representations of reputation, all became sites for shame's reconstruction, making it thoroughly modern and in tune with twentieth century Britain's expectations. Using a suite of detailed micro-histories, the book examines a wide expanse of twentieth century sites of shame including conceptions of cowardice/conscientious objection during the First World War, fraud and clerical scandal in the interwar years, the shame associated with both abortion and sexual behaviour redefined in different ways as 'deviant', shoplifting in the 1980s and lastly, how homosexuality shifted from 'Coming Out' to embracing 'Pride', finally rediscovering the positivity of shame with the birth of the 'Queer'.Website 
• Nash DS, Christian ideals in British culture: stories of belief in the twentieth century, Palgrave Macmillan (2013)
  ISBN: 9780230572652 eISBN: 9781137349057
  Abstract This text offers a challenge to conventional histories of secularisation by focusing upon the importance of central religious narratives. These narratives are changed significantly over time, but also to have been invested with importance and meaning by religious individuals and organisations as well as by secular ones.Website 
• Kilday A-M, Nash DS, Ed., Histories of Crime: Britain 1600-2000, Palgrave Macmillan Publishers (2010)
  ISBN: 9780230224704 eISBN: 9781137043214
  Abstract

  Providing a rounded and coherent history of crime and the law spanning the past 400 years, Histories of Crime explores the evolution of attitudes towards crime and criminality over time. Bringing together contributions from internationally acknowledged experts, the book highlights themes, current issues and key debates in the history of deviance and bad behaviour, including:marital cruelty and adultery, infanticide, murder. the underworld, blasphemy and moral crimes, fraud and white-collar crime, the death penalty and punishment. Individual case studies of violent and non-violent crime are used to explore the human means and motives behind criminal practice. Through these, the book illuminates society's wider attitudes and fears about criminal behaviour and the way in which these influence the law and legal system over time. This fascinating book is essential reading for students and teachers of history, sociology and criminology, as well as anyone interested in Britain's criminal past.

• Nash D, Blasphemy in Britain and America, 1800-1930 , Pickering and Chatto Publishers (2010)
  ISBN: 9781851969968
  Abstract Blasphemy is the battleground where religious and secular worlds come into conflict. Blasphemy laws are used to discipline unruly populations, to emphasize governmental authority and, latterly in the West, to protect the religious beliefs of others. To those accused of it as a crime it has appeared unnecessary, anachronistic and oppressive. Victims of the crime have seen laws as their only protection against individuals seeking to undermine not simply beliefs but wider standards of morality and behaviour within society. These victims of the crime have also used the concept of blasphemy to reassert their own identities around specific moral imperatives. Blasphemy has a history which reaches into issues of conflict, religious belief, freedom of expression, and is bound up with the growth and development of new media. This four-volume edition draws together a wide variety of rare primary sources relating to blasphemy from the Enlightenment through to the modern era. Sources are arranged to represent both sides of the debate, giving voice to accused and accusor. New editorial material includes a general introduction, headnotes, endnotes and a consolidated index in the final volume. Most texts are reset, with a few (containing cartoons) produced in facsimile. The edition is broadly interdisciplinary and will be important for scholars of Legal History, Religious Studies, Literature, History of Art, Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Studies.
• Nash D, Kilday A-M, Cultures of shame: exploring crime and morality in Britain 1600-1900, Palgrave Macmillan (2010)
  ISBN: 9780230525702 eISBN: 9780230309098
  Abstract

  This monograph traces the use, abuse and negotiation of the concept of shame from 1600-1900. The book shows good and bad behaviour, morality and perceptions of crime in British society at large, and identifies the changing interaction between popular and official notions of shame. Each of the chapters is a single episode in the ongoing history of shame contextualized by two chapters which discuss the historiography and theory of shame and their implications for the history of crime and social relations. The wide acceptance and utility of shame, as the early episodes in the book suggest, became manifestly less obvious during the eighteenth century. The traditional uses and functions of shame were questioned, yet the growth of the public sphere allowed some of its messages to become recast in modern forms. The last examples in the book demonstrate shame's longevity and relevance beyond the arrival of modernity.

  Website 
• Kilday A-M, Nash DS, Ed., Murder and Mayhem in Twentieth Century Britain, Palgrave ()
  

Journal articles

• Nash D, 'Secularist History: Past Perspectives and Future Prospects'
  Secularism and Nonreligion 8 (1) (2019)
  ISSN: 2053-6712 eISSN: 2053-6712
  Abstract

  This article provides a survey of the growth and development of historiography about both Secularism and the wider secular movement since the onset of the nineteenth century. It analyses and highlights the main themes and their advocates as well as suggesting what historiographical developments we might be likely to see in the future.

  Website 
• Nash D, 'Negotiating the Marketplace of Comfort: Secularists Confront New Paradigms of Death and Dying in Twentieth-Century Britain'
  Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire 95 (2018) pp.327-352
  ISSN: 0035-0818
  Abstract Secularist death in Britain had carved itself a viable place in society by the end of the nineteenth century. Whilst it had made escaping theistic services and burial possible for its own adherents it did not move forward into a ‘promised land’ of widely practiced secular and secularist approaches to death. Christianity and other non-rational approaches to death rapidly remade their messages about death and the hereafter and created a ‘marketplace of comfort’ where they hoped to attract adherents with new types of theological and philosophical offering. Secularists had to adapt to this new world and by the end of the 20th century had themselves grasped the essence of what the ‘marketplace of comfort’ could provide. In doing so the actively rational message in secular funeral provision began to be less important than the satisfactory and flexible forms of comfort it could offer to individuals.
• Nash DS, 'Believing in secularisation : Stories of decline, potential and resurgence'
  Journal of Religious History 41 (4) (2017) pp.505-531
  ISSN: 0022-4227
  Abstract This article draws upon the methodology pioneered by the writer in Christian Ideals in British Culture: Stories of Belief in the Twentieth Century. This stressed the importance of narrative’s ability to influence and shape both secular and religious responses to the world and Christian belief within it in Britain. Secularisation narratives and their influence in the twentieth century are the article’s primary concern. Some, such as Jeffrey Cox, have already alluded to the fact that secularisation appeared to be something of a “story.” Alongside this, the conclusions from the recent work of the author indicated that the theory became infused with a series of clear narratives — with intentions, agendas, and messages. These had a series of storytellers/audiences and, lastly, often carried a palette of potentially didactic warnings. The article unpacks the significance of the secularisation narratives of “disenchantment,” “supply and demand failure,” “urbanisation, mobility, and decay,” “ideological discredit,” “triumph of (hard and social) science,” “consumer sovereignty and materialism,” “feminisation,” “the post-secular,” and “cataclysms and golden ages.” It shows how these narratives shaped the response of the pro-secular and defenders of Christian belief, as well as those who problematised the very relationship between the religious and the secularWebsite 
• Nash D, 'A Radical Approach to Anachronisms'
  History Today (2015)
  ISSN: 0018-2753
  
• Nash D, 'The Propaganda of the Defeated'
  History Today (2015)
  ISSN: 0018-2753
  
• Nash D, 'John Bull Spirit'
  History Today 65 (1) (2015)
  ISSN: 0018-2753
  
• Nash D, 'Reassessing the "crisis of faith" in the victorian age: eclecticism and the spirit of moral inquiry'
  Journal of Victorian Culture 16 (1) (2011) pp.65-82
  ISSN: 1355-5502
  Abstract This article examines both recent scholarship in the field of Victorian religion and conviction alongside new research on secularization that have cast doubt on an older historical narrative about the 'crisis of faith' and the 'triumph' of the secular. My discussion challenges the emergence of an alternative narrative of crisis that focuses on the 'crisis of doubt' rather than the 'crisis of faith'. In particular, it answers the recent work of Timothy Larsen who argues that many past (and some present) approaches to Victorian religious culture have overemphasized doubt at the expense of considering enduring forms of Christian religiosity. By reappraising the career histories of the radical secularists (notably, Annie Besant) that Larsen uses to support his thesis, I test some of the key assumptions and conclusions of his influential account. My analysis questions the positioning of faith and scepticism as polar opposites and the usefulness of the idea of 'crisis' when examining either belief or doubt. Changes in individuals' convictions and practices might be better seen as part of their life-long quest for an all-embracing morality. Website 
• Nash D, 'To prostitute morality, libel religion, and undermine government: blasphemy and the strange persistence of providence in Britain since the seventeenth century'
  Journal of Religious History 32 (2008) pp.439-456
  ISSN: 0022-4227
  Website 
• Nash D, 'Analyzing the History of Religious Crime. Models of Passive and Active Blasphemy Since the Medieval Period'
  Journal of Social History 41 (2007) pp.5-+
  ISSN: 0022-4529 eISSN: 1527-1897
  
• Nash D, Bakalis C, 'Incitement to Religious Hatred and the 'Symbolic': How Will the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 Work?'
  Liverpool Law Review 28 (3) (2007) pp.349-375
  ISSN: 0144-932X
  Abstract

  This article examines the new offence of inciting religious hatred under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. A historical analysis of existing provisions aimed at legislating against racial hatred and blasphemy is adopted, in order to determine whether the creation of this new offence is justified and necessary. We conclude that although the new offence may fulfil an important symbolic role in a post September 11th environment, in its current form the legislation has not taken sufficient account of the precedent of racial hatred and blasphemy laws, or of more general questions about the criminalisation of hatred.

  Website 
• Nash D, 'Beyond the Bible (parallels Between Robert Goulds Popular Turn-of-the-century Moral Instruction League and Todays Emphasis on Good Citizenship)'
  History Today 49 (1999) pp.26-27
  ISSN: 0018-2753
  
• Nash D, 'The Boer War and Its Humanitarian Critics'
  History Today 49 (1999) pp.42-49
  ISSN: 0018-2753
  
• Nash D, 'Arguing By Design + Science and Religion'
  History Today 47 (1997) pp.5-8
  ISSN: 0018-2753
  
• Nash D, 'Blasphemy in Victorian Britain? Foote and the Freethinker'
  History Today 45 (1995) pp.13-19
  ISSN: 0018-2753
  

Book chapters

• Nash D, 'Genealogies of Indifference? New Theoretical Thoughts on the History and Creation of Narratives Surrounding Christianity, Secularism and Indifference' in Quack J, Schuh C (ed.), Religious Indifference in Modern Europe, Springer (2017)
  ISBN: 9783319484747 eISBN: 9783319484761
  Website 
• Nash D, 'Leicester: Metropolis of Dissent' in Rodger R, Madgin R (ed.), Leicester a Modern History, Carnegie (2016)
  ISBN: 9781859362242
  Abstract What sort of place is Leicester and how has it been shaped by its past? This lavishly produced book brings together an impressive amount of new historical research which seeks to answer this question, providing fresh interpretations of Leicester’s history since 1800. The chapters analyse the events, changes and characteristics that have shaped the city and given it its distinctive identity. The sights, sounds and smells of the city in the twenty-first century are products of cumulative layers of history, layers which are peeled back by a specially assembled team of historians, all of whom have lived and worked in Leicester for many years. The result is an important book which helps us to understand the city’s past, so that we may better understand the present and know how to approach the future. Above all, this fascinating volume demonstrates that Leicester is a quietly confident city built on firm historical foundations of which Leicester citizens of today can feel very proud.
• Nash DS, 'The Uses of a Martyred Blasphemer’s Death: The Execution of Thomas Aikenhead, Scotland’s Religion, The Enlightenment and Contemporary Activism' in Kilday A-M, Nash D (ed.), Law Crime and Deviance Since 1700: Micro-Studies in the History of Crime, Bloomsbury (2016)
  ISBN: 9781472585271 eISBN: 9781472585295 (ePub)
  Abstract Law, Crime and Deviance since 1700 explores the potential for the 'micro-study' approach to the history of crime and legal history. A selection of in-depth narrative micro-studies are featured to illustrate specific issues associated with the theme of crime and the law in historical context. The methodology used unpacks the wider historiographical and contextual issues related to each thematic area and facilitates discussion of the wider implications for the history of crime and social relations. 
  
  The case studies in the volume cover a range of incidents relating to crime, law and deviant behaviour since 1700, from policing vice in Victorian London to chain gang narratives from the southern United States. The book concludes by demonstrating how these narratives can be brought together to produce a more nuanced history of the area and suggests avenues for future research and study.Website 
• Nash D, Kilday A-M, 'Introduction' in Kilday A-M, Nash D (ed.), Law Crime and Deviance since 1700, Bloomsbury (2016)
  ISBN: 9781472585271
  
• Nash D S, 'Blasphemy and the Law: The Fall and Rise of a Legal Non Sequitor' in Paul Cliteur and Tom Herrenberg (ed.), The Fall and Rise of Blasphemy Law, Leiden University Press (2016)
  ISBN: 978 90 8728 268 4
  
• Nash D, 'Blasphemy, the Fall and Rise of a Legal Non Sequitor' in Cliteur P, Herrenberg T (ed.), The Fall and Rise of Blasphemy Law, Leiden University Press (2016)
  
• Nash D, 'Blasphemy and the Control of Spirituality, Censorship and Secularisation in Britain and the West between the 16th and 20th Centuries' in Cadilhon F, Suire E, Chassaigne P (ed.), Censure et autorites publiques: De l'epoque moderne a nos jours, Peter Lang (2015)
  ISBN: 9782875742735
  
• Nash D, 'From Scurrilous Periodical to the Public Platform. Policing Blasphemers and Anti-Social Behaviour: Constructing the Public Peace Then and Now' in Pickard S (ed.), Anti-Social Behaviour in Britain: Victorian and Edwardian Perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan (2014)
  ISBN: 9781137399304 eISBN: 9781137399311
  Abstract Policing blasphemy and blasphemers has caused problems for various forms of authority since time immemorial. It combines the conflicting imperatives of controlling anti-social behaviour, public order, protection of the peace and the lasting concerns of individuals having rights to freedom of expression. While the imperatives of the first two conceptions have been fundamentally important in Europe since medieval times, the issues associated with the second two have only emerged with any serious and lasting impact since the Enlightenment. Although the Reformation heightened the urge and aspiration among authority to establish behavioural conformity around the subject of religion, it was later developments that cemented the significance of this. Thus, this chapter is an assessment of how the uneasy balancing act between anti-social behaviour/public order and freedom of expression has been managed by policing authorities over the ‘long nineteenth century’ (1790–1920). When we turn to the recent contemporary history of blasphemy public order concerns remained paramount in the considerations of this issue by the House of Lords Select Committee of 2003. Thereafter, the arrival of incitement to religious hatred laws confirmed, more firmly than ever before, the primacy of public order approaches to the policing of blasphemy’s anti-social potential. From this it emerges that, not altogether surprisingly, policing regimes understand public order imperatives and appreciate their importance to a much greater extent than more abstract concerns around freedom of expression.Website 
• Nash D, 'Afterword: Blasphemy Beyond Modernism' in Grenda S, Beneke C, Nash D (ed.), Profane: Sacrilegious Expression in a Multicultural Age, University of California Press (2014)
  ISBN: 9780520277229
  
• Nash D, 'Towards an Agenda for the Wider Study of Shame: Theorising from nineteenth-century British Evidence' in Rowbotham J, Muravyeva M, Nash D (ed.), Shame, Blame and Culpability: Crime Violence and the Modern State, Routledge (2013)
  ISBN: 9780415537223 eISBN: 9780203110621
  
• Rowbotham J, Muravyeva M, Nash D, 'Introduction' in Rowbotham J, Muravyeva M, Nash D (ed.), Shame, Blame and Culpability: Crime Violence and the Modern State, Routledge (2012)
  ISBN: 9780415537223
  
• Kilday A-M, Nash D, 'Desperate Measures or Cruel Intentions: Infanticide in Britain since 1600' in Kilday A, Nash DS (ed.), Histories of Crime: Britain 1600-2000, Palgrave (2010)
  

Conference papers

• Nash D, 'Blasphemers Or Profaners. Shaping Deviance in the French and British Traditions'
  Cahiers Victoriens and Edouardiens (2005) pp.117-+
  

Reviews

• Nash D, review of God and the Atlantic: America, Europe, and the Religious Divide., in American Historical Review 117 (2013) pp.1189-1190ISSN: 0002-8762 eISSN: 1937-5239
  Website 
• Nash D, review of Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-century England, in English Historical Review 123 (2008) pp.233-235ISSN: 0013-8266
  Website 
• Nash D, review of Blasphemy. Impious Speech in the West From the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 54 (2004) pp.589-590ISSN: 0022-0469
  
• Nash D, review of Religion and Society in England, 1850-1914, in Journal of Religious History 22 (1998) pp.238-240ISSN: 0022-4227
  
• Nash D, review of Workers Worlds - Cultures and Communities in Manchester and Salford, 1880-1939, in Economic History Review 48 (1995) pp.191-193ISSN: 0013-0117 eISSN: 1468-0289
  

Other publications

• Nash D, 'Blasphemy Introduction'
  Journal of Religious History 32 (2008) pp.393-397ISSN: 0022-4227
  

Membership of professional bodies

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Consultancy

Consultancy

Consultancy to the National Secular Society regarding repeal of the blasphemy laws in Britain. Also consultancy with the National Secualr Society regarding the administration of religious oaths in parliamentary democracies. In 2003 gave evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Religious Offences.

Conferences

Conferences

Conference papers given since 2003

• ‘Blasphemy: legislating then, legislating now’ to Centre for the Study of Hate Crime/SOLON Conference. Hate Crime in Perspective, February 2003.
• Featured Round Table participant in ‘Future of Hate Crime Studies’ panel at this same conference.
• ‘Republicanism in England: A middle class cultural triumph?. To Midlands Victorian Studies Seminar, Birmingham University, May 2003.
• ‘Religious Citizenship or Religious Identity? Historical Perspectives on a Conundrum’. To Law Seminar Oxford Brookes University, June 2003.
• 'Secular geographies of London'. To Conference London Politics 1815-1914. Institute of Historical Research, June 2003.
• ‘Blasphemy and Golobalisation’ to Conference. Citoyennete, empires, mondialisation, Universite Blaise Pascal, Clermont Ferrand, September 2003.
• ‘Punishing the Profaners. The place of Order and Retribution in Punishing blasphemous Crimes. Social History Society Conference, Rouen, France, January 2004.
• ‘Profane paradigms; Blasphemy in early modern Europe. To ESSH conference, Berlin, March 2004.
• ‘Blasphemous evils and evil Blasphemies’ To Conference The nature of evil, Mansfield College, Oxford, July 2004.
• ‘Blasphemy, violence and the anti-Civilising process. Social History Society Conference, Dublin, Ireland, January 2005.
• March 2005 ‘Blasphemy the helpmate of evil’ to conference ‘Religion and Evil’ Freij University Amsterdam/TroppenMuseum.
• November 2005 Opening Featured Keynote Speech (funded) at ‘Blasphemy and the Sacrilegous’ Centre for Humanities Research, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
• April 2006 ‘Blasphemy and the emergence of the modern State’ Social History Society Annual Conference, Reading.
• March 2007 ‘Models of ‘passive’ and ‘active’ blasphemy’. Social History Society Annual Conference, Exeter
• July 2007 ‘The ‘children of the brain’ face the ‘Herod of authority’ Blasphemy’s past and its shadow over our present and our future. Featured Keynote speech to ‘Theory, Faith, Culture – an interdisciplinary international conference, University of Cardiff
• September 2007 Opening Featured Keynote Speech Law Religion and Culture Conference, University of Lancaster
• Seminar Series ‘Law and Crime: Past into Present’ in conjunction with the Centre for Legal Research and Policy Studies (Oxford Brookes) 2003 onwards.
• Keynote lecture as Inaugral event of the Religion and Philosophy Conference at the Catholic Institute of Sydney (October 2008).
• Keynote Lecturer to the Conference of Sweden's National Church in Stockholm (december 2009).
• Other international papers given since 2007 in Oxford, Utrecht, St Petersburg, Lyon, Amsterdam, Warwick, Lison, Trinity College Dublin, London, Keele, Helsinki, Tampere and Bordeaux.
• Addressed atheist Congress Dublin (June 2011)
• Invited to Brief Member of the Irish Parliament on the issue of blasphemy (February 2012).
• Addressed the Irish Constitutional Convention about blasphemy law repeal (November 2013).