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About
Overview
I specialise in the intellectual and cultural history of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. I have published on a variety of topics, including: the history of the idea of Europe; British understandings of the non-European world; the histories of travel and travel writing; Romanticism; philhellenism; the history of ‘racial’ thought; and the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities.
What unites these themes is my interest in the history of space: how different spaces were conceptualised in the past; how representations of those spaces helped people to understand the world around them; and how people in the past experienced specific physical environments.
Research Trajectory
I started my research career interested in British culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. My first major research project explored the writings and travel activities of individuals associated with the poets Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. In The Shelley-Byron Circle and the Idea of Europe I showed how this group of intellectuals understood ‘Europe’ in geographical, political and aesthetic terms. This led to a broader project on how eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British people conceptualised ‘Europe’, culminating in Europe and the British Geographical Imagination, 1760-1830. At the same time, I became interested in the methods and possibilities of ‘spatial history’. I edited The Uses of Space in Early Modern History to explore how spatial concepts can be employed by or applied to the study of history, and how spaces and spatial ideas were used for practical and ideological purposes in specific periods. Seeking to move beyond strictly conceptual understandings of space and towards an appreciation of material spatial experience, my current research project focuses on how eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British people experienced physical environments.
Current Research
My current research encompasses three overlapping themes:
Historical Representations of Spaces
I am interested in historical representations of spaces in texts and images, particularly when these intersect with ideas about community. Most of my work in this area concerns the history of the idea of Europe, and I have explored in detail how Europe has been conceptualised in terms of religion, the natural environment, race and other theories of human difference, statehood, borders, commerce, empire, and ideas about historical change. I also write about British representations of the non-European world, so far focussing on America and Asia.
Spatial History
I am interested in methodological and conceptual questions related to the study of spaces and spatial experiences. In particular, I explore what the discipline of history can bring to the study of space, and how historical scholarship can learn from other disciplines concerned with space. Some of the issues I have considered include: what it means to talk about the ‘agency’ of space; the extent to which textual rhetorics can help constitute spatialised identities; the role of interdisciplinary research in socio-spatial study.
Real-and-Imagined Spaces
I am interested in how people in the past encountered material environments, and specifically in how the imbrication of their physical and imaginative experiences creates ‘real-and-imagined’ spaces. My wider objective in this research is to use predominantly textual sources to write about the history of spaces and spatial experiences, but to do so in a manner which acknowledges the materiality of those spaces and does not treat them solely or principally as discursive constructions. So far, my research in this area has encompassed philhellenic travellers to early nineteenth-century Greece, and early modern tourists visiting Mediterranean classical sites.
Teaching
My teaching is closely related to my research interests. My graduate course, Maps, History and Power: The Spaces and Cultures of the Past, is about the history of cartography. It explores how European and non-European cultures from the medieval to the modern periods used maps to understand the world around them, and also to serve practical and ideological purposes. My undergraduate special subject course is Travel, Pleasure and Politics: The European Grand Tour 1670-1825. It studies the motivations, preconceptions, activities and attitudes of early modern British travellers to Europe, showing how they shaped the modern tourist industry.
I won LSE Teaching Prizes and Education Awards in 2016, 2019 and 2020, and was nominated for LSE Student Union Teaching Awards in 2014, 2015, 2020 and 2025.
| Watch Dr Paul Stock on "What Going on Holiday Says about Us” In a LSE Research video, Dr Paul Stock looks at how the Grand Tour of the 17th, 18th and 19th century has helped to define holidaymaking today. He contends that the history of going on holiday reveals important things about us, not least the UK’s complicated relationship with Europe. |
Other titles: MSc Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation Programme Director, Masters Admissions Tutor
Expertise
Intellectual and Cultural History, Long Eighteenth Century, Britain; Idea of Europe, Spatial History, History of Cartography, Travel and Tourism
Teaching
Dr Paul Stock usually teaches the following courses in the Department:
At undergraduate level:
HY118: Faith, Power and Revolution: Europe and the Wider World, c.1500-c.1800
HY323: Travel, Pleasure and Politics: The European Grand Tour 1670-1825
At postgraduate level:
HY469: Maps, History and Power: The Spaces and Cultures of the Past
| talk about his courses, how they are structured and how students can benefit from taking them in order to better understand the world we live in today. |
PhD Student Supervison:
Jack Englehardt (Provisional thesis title: ‘Beneath Britannia’s Sun: Cultural Mappings of the Tropics in British Popular Print, 1815 to 1860'.)
Alisha Ma (Provisional thesis title: ‘Aesthetic Experience and Colonial Worldmaking in the Collection Spaces of Queen Mary II at Hampton Court Palace and Kensington Palace, 1689-94')
Dr Stock also supervised the following PhD students:
| Recent PhD student(s) | Thesis title |
| William Mitchell (2022) | ‘The Whig Idea of Europe, 1685-1705’ |
Engagement and impact
2025
Dr Paul Stock co-authors new article 'From the Intercellular to the Extraterrestrial: The Need for Interdisciplinary Spatial Study'
Dr Stock has co-authored a new article which has been published in the journal Space and Culture.
The article is entitled 'From the Intercellular to the Extraterrestrial: The Need for Interdisciplinary Spatial Study' and explores new forms of socio-spatial study premised on interdisciplinary exchange. It has long been acknowledged that studying space involves analysing material environments, mentalities, and social practices. An interdisciplinary approach allows us to understand the resulting complexities more fully. One case study understands the social inhabitation of space as something microscopic and occurring within our cells. The other uses anthropological research to understand how non-Western cultures conceptualize so-called “outer” space.
Read the article HERE
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, 1760-1830was released by Oxford University Press in early October. In his new book, Dr Stockprovides 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".
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.