Dr Simon Sleight

Biography

Dr Simon Sleight is Senior Lecturer in Australian History, Co-founding Director of the Children's History Society and Deputy Director of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at King’s. A native of Lincolnshire, Simon received his tertiary education at Warwick, University College London and Monash University in Melbourne, his doctoral thesis winning the Australian Historical Association’s Serle Award for best PhD in Australian history. His latest books are Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World (Palgrave, 2016, co-edited with Shirleene Robinson) and Young People and the Shaping of Public Space in Melbourne, 1870-1914 (Routledge, 2013). He has also published on urban memory, the morphology of cities, street gangs, processions, the representation of working childhoods, expatriate experience, and the use of historical cartoons. Dr Sleight’s current research project explores the concept and experience of ‘geographies of belonging’ in relation to ‘British world’ migrant groups in Britain, 1793 to present. A co-edited project – A Cultural History of Youth in the Modern Age – is also in progress.

Research Interest

The history of children and young people; Urban history (particularly 1850 to present) and the production of space; Social and cultural history, especially the history of experience, and historical memory; Interdisciplinary history, especially the links between history and geography.