Dr Hiroki Shin FHEA

• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, 2024
• PhD in History, St Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge
• MA in Area Studies (British Studies), University of Tokyo Graduate School
• BA in Area Studies and International Politics, University of Tokyo

I am a historian of energy, the environment and modern economic systems (finance, trade and transport) from the eighteenth century to the present. I have written extensively on the historical evolution of modern energy regimes and the impact of energy-intensive societies on culture, everyday life and the natural environment in the Global South and North. Since receiving a PhD in economic history from the University of Cambridge, I have held various research and teaching posts at the University of York, the University of Manchester, Birkbeck College and Queen’s University Belfast.

I am currently involved in some major interdisciplinary research projects including the Future Island-Island project (as co-investigator), a part of the AHRC Green Transition Ecosystems scheme. I serve as a general editor for the Critical Energy Studies monograph series (MIT Press) along with Dominic Boyer, Cara Daggett, Penélope Plaza and Imre Szeman.

My current project examines the roles of cultural and heritage institutions in responding to today’s climate crisis as a way of envisaging society’s cultural adaptation to climate change. The project explores energy-related exhibitions and motion films in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, analysing how cultural media have shaped and changed the public’s understanding of energy technology and its future. In this project, I am working with several museums, science centres and other cultural institutions across the United Kingdom, Europe, Americas and Asia.

In addition to my work on energy history, I have published on the histories of transport marketing, paper currency and lotteries. 

Dr Shin welcomes enquiries about potential postgraduate projects on all aspects of energy history, environmental history and modern economic history.

Find out more - our PhD History  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

My primary research interest is the evolution of modern energy regime at the national (especially Britain and Japan) and global levels. Between 2012 and 2015, I was co-investigator of the AHRC-funded major research project Material Cultures of Energy, an international research project that explored historical changes in energy consumption, infrastructure and energy culture from energy users’ perspectives. I subsequently led the Communicating Material Cultures of Energy project, based in the Science Museum London, which established an interdisciplinary, cross-sector platform for discussing the public communication of energy issues. I am currently working on two monograph projects: one on the history of Japan’s energy and the other on the decarbonisation of culture.

Financial History

I have just completed a monograph The Age of Paper: The Bank Note, Communal Currency and British Society, 1790s–1830s (Cambridge Studies in Economic History, Cambridge University Press), which is the first detailed examination of Britain’s transition to paper currency during the long eighteenth century. I am planning another research project to examine the long-term evolution of Britain’s credit currency system.

Transport History

Since my first research post at the University of York and the National Railway Museum, York, in the AHRC-Funded Commercial Cultures of Britain’s Railways, 1872­–1977, I have been interested in the cultural approach to transport history to discover the origin of hypermobility in our present time. I have published on the marketing of railway travel in Britain, railway advertising and on the culture of speed.

Public History

Public history is another strand of my academic interests. During my professional career, which cuts across research institutions and the museum sector, I have worked with numerous museums and businesses on exhibitions and public events. I have previously held positions at the Science Museum, London, and the National Railway Museum, York. Between 2021 and 2022, I was awarded a senior fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution in the United States to work on a research project Telling Stories of Energy in the Age of Climate Crisis: Energy Narratives in Climate Change Exhibitions, 1990s–2019.