2025
Dr Paul Stock publishes new article in History
'Text and Topos: British Travellers to Real-and-Imagined Classical Sites, c. 1560–1820' looks at how early-modern British travellers to the Mediterranean often understood their journeys through the lens of classical texts and culture. Historians sometimes explain this as an imaginative phenomenon: travellers’ preconceptions shaped by classical knowledge guided their subsequent comprehension and activity. This article instead argues that travellers’ experiences of classical sites incorporated both physical and imaginative aspects, usefully expressed by two meanings of the Greek word topos, which can mean both ‘place’ and ‘convention’.
Read the article in full HERE
2023
New article in the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society journal
Paul Stock's new article, 'The Idea of Asia in British Geographical Thought, 1652–1832' has been published in the journal Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. The article explores how ordinary literate people understood Asian peoples and places from the mid-seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century. It is available to download for free from the publisher's website.
2022
Dr Paul Stock on Spatial Agency
What does space do? Can we speak of space as having agency? Dr Stock's new article in Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques uses insights from material culture studies and actor-network theory to discuss ways of re-framing agency as an assemblage of human and non-human affect.
2020
Britain's place in Europe
Controversy about Britain’s place in Europe has dominated British politics for the last several decades. But the concerns and passions of the present day are not new; in fact, these debates have been present in British popular culture for a very long time. Read Dr Paul Stock's piece for the LSE Politics blog, based on the findings of his latest book. He discusses how debates about Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century hinge on topics which are still recognizable. Read here
2019
New book
Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760-1830 was released by Oxford University Press in early October. In his new book, Dr Stock provides a thorough and much-needed historical analysis of Britain’s enduringly complex intellectual relationship with Europe. He traces the history of ideas in non-elite contexts to discern widespread British attitudes to Europe, and not just the views of a few familiar prominent intellectuals.
Cited in The Guardian
“Global tourism hits record highs – but who goes where on holiday?”, a 1 July article written by our student Molly Blackall (3rd year BSc IR and History) on the rise of tourism and where the world’s 1.4 billion international travellers go on vacation, utilises Dr Stock’s LSE Research video “Why People Go on Holiday” as part of a section outlining the history of tourism in brief. Read the full article here.
2018
Review of Horace Walpole exhibition
Dr Paul Stock reviewed the "Lost Treasures of Strawberry Hill: Masterpieces from Horace Walpole’s Collection" in Criticks: The Reviews Website of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (25 November). Although Dr Stock finds that significant presentational problems make the displays and their contexts less than fully comprehensible to visitors, the exhibition offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for enthusiasts of eighteenth-century culture. Find out why.
2017
Two new publications on the Concept of Europe
Dr Paul Stock’s new chapter, "What is Europe? Place, Idea, Action", was published in May in Ash Amin and Philip Lewis’s edited volume, European Union and Disunion: Reflections on European Identity (British Academy, 2017). In “What is Europe?", Dr Stock looks at "Europe" as a “concept fashioned by humans, established and reinvented according to historically specific belief systems and ideological principles.” The chapter was first presented at the British Academy conference, "European Union and Disunion: What Has Held Europeans Together and What is Dividing Them?", which took place in November 2016. Another article by Dr Stock on a similar topic was also published online around the same time in The European Legacy: Towards New Paradigms. The article entitled, "Towards a Language of 'Europe': History, Rhetoric, Community", addresses the difficulty of understanding “Europe” as a concept or form of identity when language and nationality are considered the foundation of imagined communities and loyalties. LSE users can read the article for free.
2016
Dr Paul Stock on "What is Europe?" at British Academy Conference "Europen Union and Disunion"
On 4 November, Dr Stock gave a talk at the British Academy conference, "European Union and Disunion: What Has Held Europeans Together and What is Dividing Them?". The conference explored some of the drawn-out narratives and sentiments that at different times have aided or compromised the imagining and workings of Europe. It also engaged with and unpacked some of the constitutive stories of identity and meaning that in the past and present have helped to bring together and divide Europeans. The speakers included, among others, Professor Linda Colley (Princeton University), Professor Sir Ian Kershaw (University of Sheffield), Dr Kylie Murray (University of Cambridge), Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve (University of Cambridge), Professor Dame Helen Wallace (The British Academy) and Professor Patrick Wright (King’s College London). Dr Paul Stock addressed the question, “What is Europe? Place, Idea, Action”.
Watch Dr Stock's talk
Event: "Britain and Europe: Culture, Country or Continent?"
On 15 June 2016, Dr Paul Stock took part in a panel discussion hosted by the Legatum Institute's 'Roads to Freedom' Series on "Britain and Europe: Culture, Country or Continent?" Ahead of the UK’s forthcoming EU Referendum, the panel analysed Britain's relationship with continental Europe in the context of a thousand years of history. Other speakers included, Patricia Clavin, Professor of International History, University of Oxford; Sir Simon Mayall, Senior Advisor, Greenhill and Co; Legatum Fellow and Brendan Simms, Professor of the History of International Relations, University of Cambridge. The discussion was moderated by Hywel Williams, Senior Adviser, Legatum Institute.
Watch the video interview