Dr Jacob Fredrickson

• BA, History (Bristol)
• MA, Modern British Studies (Birmingham)
• PhD, History (Birmingham)

I studied history at Bristol, where I was more interested in performing in plays than writing essays. My time at Bristol sparked an interest in history creatively told, and the way historical argument can be embedded in novels, theatre and film. I joined the centre for Modern British Studies at Birmingham in 2016, an exciting place (and time) to study British history. I stayed for my PhD, which I successfully defended in September 2023. During my doctoral studies I taught a series of modules on the history of Birmingham and the West Midlands, which has grown my interest in the ways history, heritage, and memory shape individual and collective identification with Birmingham and the wider region.

Undergraduate

• Convenor, People and Places A & B
• Public History
• Making of the Contemporary World

Postgraduate

• Convenor, MA Midlands and Local History

My research is broadly interested in how intimate life and individual lives problematise and recast our understanding of British society, politics and urban life across the twentieth century.

I am currently working on my first book, Crimes of Passion, Violence and the Making of Modern Intimate Life in Britain. This project attempts a new history of the transformation of intimacy in modern Britain, with violence, and the threat of violence at its centre. The 'crime of passion', an inherently unstable category through which intimate violence has been comprehended, took on new significance, and generated a new kind of sympathy in the twentieth century. Such sympathy rested on changing ideas of ‘control’, particularly over the emotions, as love and sexuality were increasingly positioned as cornerstones of individual health and happiness. It contributes to growing transnational interest in the relationship between ‘love’ and the law, and the way anglophone legal systems have grappled with comprehending, and disciplining, the emotions.

During the last academic year I have been a postdoctoral research fellow on the collaborative project Utopias in Crisis, driven by a new partnership between the University of Birmingham and Bournville Village Trust. Working with Professor Matt Houlbrook and Professor Nicholas Crowson, we have been working on a new history of Bournville, one that can help BVT respond to today’s social, economic and environmental crises. As part of this project, I am currently working on two journal articles focused on Bournville. One on the history of the almshouse movement, the other on the unintended effects of leasehold reform in the 1960s.

This year, I will be the interim-director of the Centre for Midlands History and Cultures. I am interested in the display, representation and performance of the past in Birmingham and the West Midlands, and how this shapes the region’s sense of itself. I have worked with a number of cultural and heritage organisations, including Selly Manor, ThinkTank and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, in developing exhibitions that present new ways of understanding the history of Birmingham.