Welcome to Coffee with Clio

An informal place to chat about history, books and ideas

A historian writes

A historian writes pretty much all the time. Emails (sometimes about history), course material (often about history), grant applications (about history we would like to write), books and articles (almost always about history). Sometimes we get asked to contribute to blogs and media about history and the present.

How does all of this writing join up? What happens to the thoughts, ideas and sparks that come out of all that writing? What about all the books we read that end up being half a sentence (or less!) in the background of something else?

In Coffee with Clio, I want to explore those ideas with people who are also interested in broad history, big history, history everywhere, history as a way to think about the present, the past, storytelling and being human.

Imagine curling up with a coffee to talk with a historian about great books, about articles that have changed their field, about a film or exhibition that was great or terrible (or both) but either way, made you think. Welcome to Coffee with Clio.

Yep, that’s me. In a drain. A historic drain… Specifically, this is a large drainage passage at Kirkstall Abbey, in Leeds, so it is a Cistercian drain. I promise, very few of my posts will be about drainage, but infrastructure projects like roads, urban planning and water management are among the many things I’m interested in, and the global climate crisis is finally getting modern policy makers to take an interest in how people centuries ago, from Mesoamerica to South India, handled scarcity and flood. So, yeah. Drains. Like lots of things, they are more interesting when you give them a historical twist.

I’m a historian of global history, especially the period c. 100-1000 CE. I’m currently finishing a book about the Western Indian Ocean in the first millennium CE (what a millennium!) and planning one about a travelogue that romped its way from Roman Alexandria to the internet, via the sack of Constantinople, the Hundred Years War and Napoleon’s Paris. I’ve published articles and chapters about heritage and museums, money and power, and global history before globalisation. I love stories about people and places and objects, and connecting up the very small with the very big: from single individuals and artefacts to theories and ideas that help make sense of the world today.

There is no coffee. Sorry.

So, what does all of that mean for Coffee with Clio? Well, you’ll have to bring your own coffee (or beverage of your choice). But for free subscribers, I’ll post once a fortnight with any of:

• discussion of a book or article I’ve recently read

• an idea I’ve been thinking about

• something I’m writing

Get up close to the process of writing history, find reading recommendations, or let me do the reading so you can shortcut to what the big debates are right now.

For paid subscribers, you’ll keep unlimited access to all back content, get extra, exclusive posts, responding to your questions, and be able to join me once a month for a live Q&A discussion. Send me queries in advance or come along and enjoy a Coffee with Clio!