Jack Hodgson

I am an historian of childhood and youth activism in whose research examines children's roles in American politics, mainly in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My first academic book, Young Reds in the Big Apple: The New York Young Pioneers of America, 1923-1934 was published by Fordham University Press in October 2024. 

I have experience both examining and supervising PhD projects. I am especially keen to hear about work pertaining to youth in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. 

It is important to me that my research reaches a wider public audience. I have written public history pieces for major international outlets including the Washington Post, Business Insider, and TIME Magazine. I have contributed to several podcast series and recently appeared on CNN's Newsroom to provide expert analysis on the history of student protest and the First Amendment. 

I was awarded my PhD by the University of Northumbria, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, after completing my project "Californians and Others: Marginalised Children and the Golden State during the Great Depression" under the supervision of Professors Tony Badger and Joe Street. I originally taught at Roehampton as a visiting lecturer before taking up my post as a lecturer in history in September 2023. 

I have also published research articles examining methodological and theoretical issues within the field of children's history. This work includes examining the political content of children's drawings from the Spanish Civil War and more recent conflicts in order to bring more "voices" into the historical narrative. I also consider researcher welfare when it comes to working with archives of children's historic trauma. 

My current research examines children's political participation and activism in American History, the history of boyhood masculinity and childhoods, and the relationship between children and the carceral state. Following the publication of a chapter examining children being treated as adults in American criminal justice, I am working on a microhistory of the trial of the youngest murder defendant in American history. 

My teaching is mainly focussed on the BA History degree although I also contribute to the BA Liberal Arts and BA English Literature programmes. At the moment I currently convene the following modules: 

• American History from Columbus to Cold War 
• Modern Revolutions in a Global Perspective 
• Race and Empire 
• Student Activism and Making Change in America
• The BA History Dissertation 

Additionally, I contribute to the teaching of the following modules:

• Childhood: Histories, Lives, and Stories 
• Cities and Empires 

BA (Hons) History 

MA History 

PGCE (History) & QTS

PhD American History