About: The Stuff of History – The Stuff of History

Content and resources about history and heritage designed to entertain, inform, and educate – with an emphasis on empathy, innovation and nuance.

The Stuff of History is coordinated by award-winning historian Dr Ben Marsh, a specialist in the Atlantic World, early America, and the Age of Revolutions, who has a teaching and research career spanning 25 years across multiple universities in the UK, including Cambridge, Brunel, Oxford, Stirling, and the University of Kent (where he is currently an Honorary Reader in History).

Besides multiple academic books and articles, his outputs have included pioneering creative and educational resources – including extensive work for schools, such as graphic novels and Top Trumps cards, that were part of a 4* Impact Case Study in the most recent national REF.

The Stuff of History is part of The Marsh Family’s content portfolio – addressing history, life, and culture at the nexus of heritage and creativity.

Brief CV

Qualifications / Roles

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
President of the Canterbury Branch of the Historical Association
Former President: British Group in Early American History; Scottish Association for the Study of America
Former Director of Impact and Engagement and Deputy Head of History, Faculty of Arts & Humanities, Kent
Former Education Lead: Age of Revolution Project (DCMS / Waterloo200 Ltd.), HA Teacher Fellowship Convenor
Former Steering Group: European Summer Academy of Atlantic History; Centre for Heritage; British Association of American Studies

Academic Appointments

Institution	Role
University of Kent	Honorary Reader in History, 2025-6 Reader in History, 2018-2025 Senior Lecturer in History, 2015-2018 Lecturer in History, 2014-2015
University of Stirling	Lecturer in History, 2004-2014
University of Oxford	Junior Lecturer in Early American History, 2002-2004
University of Brunel	Lecturer in History, 2001-2002
University of Cambridge	PhD (Colonial American History), 1998-2001

“An epic tale in which imperial conquest meets entrepreneurial failure” (Hagley Prize Committee, 2021)

“Fascinating and ground-breaking” (William and Mary Quarterly)

“Inspiring and richly documented” (Economic History Review)

“Meticulous research spanning an unusually wide range of times, places and cultures” (History of Science)

“Exhaustive” (Environmental History)

“Powerful” (Agricultural History)

Selected Publications

Type	Title	Reviews
Authored Books	• Unravelled Dreams: Silk and the Atlantic World, 1500-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) • Georgia’s Frontier Women: Female Fortunes in a Southern Colony (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2007)	• Winner of the US Hagley Prize in Business History • Winner of the Malcom & Muriel Bell Award for Best Book in Georgia History
Edited Books	• Understanding and Teaching the Age of Revolutions, ed. with Mike Rapport, The Harvey Goldberg Series for Understanding and Teaching History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017) • Detailed Reports on the Salzburger Emigrants Who Settled in America, ed. Samuel Urlsperger, George Fenwick Jones, trans. Renate Wilson (18 vols., rev. ed., Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2021).
Contributions to Books	• ‘Empire, Race, and Diversifying Kent’s History, c.1500-1840’, with David Killingray in Sheila Sweetinburgh, Elizabeth Edwards and Stuart Bligh, eds., in Maritime Kent Through the Ages (Oxford: Boydell & Brewer, 2021): 299-325. • ‘‘The Honour of the Thing’: Silk Culture in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania’, in Dagmar Schafer, Giorgio Riello and Luca Mola, eds., Threads of Global Desire: Silk in the Pre-Modern World, Pasold Studies in Textile, Dress and Fashion History (Oxford: Boydell and Brewer Press, 2018): 265-280. • ‘Visitor from South Carolina: Mrs Eliza Pinckney’, in Joanna Marschner, ed., Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017): 515-526.
Journal Articles	• ‘The Meanings of Georgia’s Eighteenth-Century Great Seals’, Georgia Historical Quarterly, 96.2 (2012): 195-232 • ‘Silk Hopes in Colonial South Carolina’, The Journal of Southern History, 78.4 (2012): 807-854. • ‘The Republic’s New Clothes: Making Silk in the Antebellum United States’, Agricultural History, 86.4 (2012): 206-234. • ‘Women and the American Revolution in Georgia’, The Georgia Historical Quarterly, 88.2 (2004): 157-178.	• Winner of the Natalie Rothstein Memorial Prize in Textile History • Winner of the E. Merton Coulter Award for Best Article in Georgia History
Other	Contributions to The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History, Oxford Bibliography of Atlantic History, Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition, book and manuscript reviews for William and Mary Quarterly, Journal of Southern History, Agricultural History, Georgia Historical Quarterly, Slavery & Abolition, Continuity and Change, History, The Public History; University Presses: Cambridge, Yale, Georgia, Leverhulme Trust, AHRC.

“The project has positively influenced the design and delivery of history teaching across schools and learning programmes; stimulated changes to pedagogical practices; supported teachers to diversify curricula … through the design, development and distribution of innovative physical and digital resources.” – REF2021 Impact Case Study

Selected Media / Consultancy

Type	Partner / Programme
Research & Collaboration	Winning Moves Ltd., English Heritage, People’s History Museum, National Maritime Museum, Chatham Historic Dockyard, Historic Royal Palaces, Yale Center for British Art, National Portrait Gallery, Bowes Museum, Fulham Palace, Canterbury Cathedral, Benjamin Franklin House, Wilberforce Centre, American Museum at Bath, National Army Museum
Digital Resources & Podcasts	Culture24, The Junto, Teaching History, Adam Matthew, Audiopi, Be Bold History, Famous People You’ve Never Heard Of
Radio	BBC Radio 4 (example: Silk), BBC World Service,
Documentary	Dover Castle, Old Operating Theatre, Royal Engineers Museum, KMTV

Selected Popular History Lectures

Topic	Titles
American Revolution / Age of Revolution	‘The Boston Tea Party: A Retrospective after 250 Years’ / ‘The Wrong Side of Revolution: Loyalists and their Experiences’ / ‘Tom Paine’s Common Sense’ / ‘Why Britain Lost the American Revolution’ / ‘Myths of the Founding Fathers’ / ‘Black Loyalists’ / ‘The Strange History of the Liberty Cap’ /
Atlantic World / Early America / Empire / Slavery	‘Consuming Bodies in Eighteenth-Century Georgia: Understanding Dirt-Eating’ / ‘Political Economy and Atlantic Ecology in Early America’ / ‘Commodities and Colonies in Early America’ / ‘Demographic Determinism and the Evolution of American Colonies’ / ‘Unravelled Dreams: Mulberry Trees and Atlantic Empires’ / ‘Understanding Native America’ / ‘The Virginia Company’ / ‘Gateways to Empire: Figuring Out Kent’s Black Histories, c.1550-1800’ / ‘Pirates and Planters of the Caribbean’ / ‘The Paradox of American Slavery and Freedom’
Education	Engaging Students with Marginalised Histories / GeoMapping Loyalist Biographies in the Classroom / Using Objects to Teach the Age of Revolution / Great Debating Skills / How to Make Historiography Interesting
Example Topics and Figures	‘The Battle of Bossenden Wood’ / ‘John Brown’s Body’ / ‘Frederick Douglass’ / ‘Pocahontas’ (Matoake) /

“Brought essential knowledge, up-to-date research and an all-important curatorial steer … central to realising its aim of foregrounding ‘hidden’ histories and embedding multiple perspectives which has proved particularly valuable with the renewed focus across the cultural and heritage sector on ‘decolonising’ collections, displays and programming.”

– CEO, Waterloo200 Ltd. on Marsh’s input to the Age of Revolution project (2018-2025).