Penelope J. Corfield is a historian, lecturer and education consultant. She recently served as the President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS).
This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
OKLearn moreWe may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.
Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.
Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.
We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.
We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.
These cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate form to help us understand how our website is being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customize our website and application for you in order to enhance your experience.
If you do not want that we track your visit to our site you can disable tracking in your browser here:
We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.
Google Webfont Settings:
Google Map Settings:
Google reCaptcha Settings:
Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:
The following cookies are also needed - You can choose if you want to allow them:
MONTHLY BLOG 14, AN UNKNOWN BOOK THAT INFLUENCED ME
/in Autobiography, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011) Writing my father’s obituary recently, I began to muse about people who have influenced me, who emphatically include my parents. And then, in parallel, I began to think about books which had an impact on me; and decided to write about one unknown tome, […]
MONTHLY BLOG 13, CROSS-CLASS MARRIAGE IN HISTORY
/in History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011) People often imagine that class barriers were more rigid in the past, notwithstanding historical fluctuations in social attitudes. As a result, it is always assumed that cross-class marriages were especially rare. Yet matters were never so simple. Among the many individuals in the past, […]
MONTHLY BLOG 12, WHAT IS A RIOT?
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011) What’s a riot? Some people prefer to name the recent disorder in numerous English cities between 6-10 August 2011 as ‘looting sprees’. But there is no absolute right-or-wrong definition. Riots usually involve crowds in substantial numbers, who are flouting the law in a tumultuous […]
MONTHLY BLOG 11, WHERE IS THE POLITICAL LEFT TODAY?
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011) WHERE IS THE POLITICAL LEFT TODAY?1 2 Today’s political scene is a blurred rainbow. Gone are the old simplicities – if they were ever that simple – when one reactionary party of tradition and privilege (the Right) was confronted by one progressive party of […]
MONTHLY BLOG 10, WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE ARTS & HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL CITING POLITICAL SLOGANS?
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011) Why are many Humanities researchers so angry at the conduct of the Arts and Humanities Research Council? Its chief executive Prof. Rick Rylance has not yet managed to assuage his critics. They fear that the AHRC has not kept due operational distance from the […]
MONTHLY BLOG 9, WHAT HAS GONE WRONG WITH THE AUDIT CULTURE?
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011) As the sorry tale of FIFA currently implies, oligarchies without external audit and accountability sooner or later get corrupted. So there was a serious principle as well as praxis behind the late Labour Government’s extension of the audit culture to so many aspects of […]
MONTHLY BLOG 8, THE BRITISH LABOUR PARTY: VIEWED SOCIOLOGICALLY, ORGANISATIONALLY AND IDEOLOGICALLY
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011) What follows is an account of the British Labour Party, organised not by chronology but in answer to three broad thematic questions: who support it? how is the Party organised? and what ideology does it represent? My commentary was first presented as a short […]
MONTHLY BLOG 7, WHY ARE BRITISH UNIVERSITIES POLITICALLY SO SUPINE?
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011) I know that I am not the only person with an interest in and affection for Britain’s Universities, who is deeply worried by the Universities’ collective failure to stand up to successive central governments. Many people raise this point with me. There is a […]
MONTHLY BLOG 6, RECONSIDERING REVOLUTIONS
/in History, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011) Revolution – metamorphosis – transformation – disjunction – diagenesis – dialectical leap forward – paradigm shift. Marvellous long words and phrases, such as these (and many more), collectively express the sense of drastic upheaval that is contained within the concept of macro-change. And yes, […]
MONTHLY BLOG 5, STUDYING HISTORY FOR LOVE AND USEFULNESS COMBINED
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2011) History as a University subject will have to fight harder for its custom – and why not? It has strong arguments for its cause. But they do need to be made loudly and clearly. From 2012 onwards the success or failure of subjects will […]