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Staff Profile

Dr Claudia Soares

UKRI Future Leaders Fellow

Background

I am a Modern British and Imperial historian specialising in nineteenth and twentieth century histories of family and childhood, the emotions and material culture, poverty and welfare, health, disability, and wellbeing, and migration and environment.

I joined Newcastle holding both a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and a NUAcT Fellowship.


My British Academy funded project, 'In care and after care: emotions, institutions, and welfare in Britain, Australia, and Canada, 1820-1930', brings a history of emotions perspective to understand residential care experiences, to address the performance of emotion and affect in care provision, and individual and collective responses to institutional life. As a transnational project, that draws on 'new' imperial history approaches too, this research contributes to a growing body of scholarship that considers the two-way dialogues, circulation, and development of welfare practices on a global scale. I am currently preparing my second monograph from this research.


In June 2024, I took up a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for a new project called 'Caring Communities: Rethinking Children's Social Care, 1800-present'. This project uses historical and contemporary sources in innovative ways to generate new understandings about the role, value, and meaning of children's care through time, and importantly offers new ideas about what children's care could look like in the future. The project develops an innovative, interdisciplinary framework that combines approaches from historical research with creative, arts based methods and participatory practices to provide a major cultural and affective history of children's care between 1800-present.


Meanwhile, I continue to develop my work on emotions, environment and migration.




Academic Background

  • BA in Art History and Visual Culture (University of Manchester);
  • MA in Victorian History (University of Manchester);
  • PhD in History (University of Manchester, supervised by Professor Julie-Marie Strange, Dr Michael Sanders, and Dr Charlotte Wildman)


I am a co-convenor of the Life Cycles Seminar that takes place at the Institute of Historical Research at Senate House, London, and the Bodies and Emotions Strands for the Social History Society.


Twitter: @claudiajsoares

Research

Having previously worked in the third sector for a number of years, I am particularly interested in the long history of the development of children's care and welfare provision more broadly, and present day social work and welfare practices experienced by a number of vulnerable and marginalised groups.


My British Academy project (‘In care and after care: emotions, institutions, and child welfare in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1820-1930’) builds on my past work on children's care in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but takes a broader, more global focus. This research draws on ‘new’ imperial history approaches, to explore the transnational circulation of childcare practices during a time when children’s rights and welfare were subjects of rigorous policy development across Britain, Australia, and Canada. The project also takes history of emotions approaches to examine care experiences, which remains a gap in scholarship to date. A number of peer-reviewed articles, and a monograph are being prepared from this research project.



Previously, I was based at The University of Manchester, where I completed my PhD in the History Department. My thesis focused on ideas of home, family, and belonging for children who spent part of their childhood in a Victorian children's institution. My research used the Waifs and Strays Society as a case study, and drew on social history and material culture approaches to challenge orthodoxies of institutional childhood. This research, and subsequent work with the archive following the award of a Wellcome Trust bursary, forms the basis of my first monograph A Home from Home? Children and Social Care in Victorian and Edwardian Britain (OUP, 2023).


My new research at Newcastle will focus on three areas:

1. Histories of fostering and adoption in the long nineteenth century

2. Experiences of migration and environment between 1788-1930

3. An affective history of children's social care from 1800-present


I am an active member of the Lifecycles and Empires and After research groups in the School of History, and of the Children and Youth NUCoRE. 




Teaching

I am not currently teaching this academic year.


I am particularly interested in supervising PhD candidates who are interested in working on histories of childhood and family, welfare and poverty, the emotions, crime and deviance, modern British history and Australian history.

Publications