Dr Paul Stock

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

PhD Student Supervison:

Jack Englehardt (Provisional thesis title: "Cultural mappings of the Imperial Tropics, 1815-1860.")

Dr Stock also supervised the following PhD students:

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".

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