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Staff Profiles

Dr Aidan Collins

Lecturer in Early Modern

Background

I am an economic and social historian interested in all aspects of the credit-based economy of the early modern period. I received my undergraduate degree from Goldsmiths, University of London, and my Masters and PhD from the University of York. I joined Newcastle in 2024 after an Early Career Research Fellowship at the John Rylands Research Institute, University of Manchester. I have previously taught at the Universities of Keele, Sheffield, York, Lincoln, Lancaster, and Teesside. 


I also teach one day per week at Goldsmiths, and convene the second- and third-year module, ‘Heresy, the Occult and the Apocalypse in Early Modern Europe’.


My office hours in semester two are Tuesday 09:00-11:00 in Armstrong Building 1.23, and Friday 12:00-13:00 (online)



Research

My research explores the ways in which economic and personal failure was described and debated in legal settings. My monograph, Financial Failure in Early Modern England, is currently under contract with Boydell and Brewer Press and is the first substantial work to analyse how bankruptcy cases were litigated in the early modern court of Chancery. The book uses legal records to increase our knowledge of the complex and multifaceted nature of debt recovery and the various meanings attached to failure throughout early modern England. I am currently conducting research on the moral aspects of debt recovery, and how historical ideas surrounding debt still resonate with contemporary understandings of right and wrong in modern society.

Teaching

Module Leader 2024:

HIS1101: Historical Sources and Methods


Contributing Lecturer 2024:

HIS2318: Revolutions of the Mind: European Thought between late Renaissance and early Enlightenment, 1550–1750

HIS3030: Why History Matters


Publications