Dr Craig Horner

Senior Lecturer, FHEA

My profile

Biography

I am a teacher and researcher in history. I have teaching and research experience in eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century history, particularly of Great Britain and Europe.

For my research I’m trying to understand how motoring now is a banality, a chore, a necessity. So I’m interested in society, motoring, cycling and mobility. I’m particularly interested in Edwardian motoring, and the circle of the racing cyclist/racing driver Selwyn Edge (1868–1940).

Academic and professional qualifications

FHEA

External examiner roles

External examiner for UCLan History BA (2015-)

Editorial Board membership

Book reviews editor, Journal of Transport History
Co-editor, Manchester Region History Review

Membership of professional associations

I am a member of MMU’s Sport and Leisure History (SpLeisH) research cluster and am working on community-based projects such as:

Manchester Motoring Memories, an oral history project of first-time motorists in the 1950s and 1960s, and which culminated in a Community Exhibition at the People’s History Museum.

The club and sporting culture of early motorists and cyclists in the Manchester area, especially the Manchester Automobile Club.

Get in touch

0161 247 6688
GM 014 Geoffrey Manton Building

Teaching

Why do I teach?

Why do I teach? To inform, but also to get a reaction. Teaching is a two-way thing, a dialogue.

Why study…

Why Study History? Three words sum it up: Participation, Employability and Encouragement.

Participation: You get out only as much as you put in.

Employability: Studying History is a wonderful opportunity to understand the world better, but all students will be in the job market sooner or later. I encourage students to think about how to learn and maximise skills that will give them the advantage. And that starts with participation…

Encouragement: I want to help you take pride in your work, your contribution, realise your potential.

Why do I teach? To inform, but also to get a reaction. Teaching is a two-way thing, a dialogue.

Postgraduate teaching

Unit leader, History in Context
Seminar teaching and lecturing for Research Methods

Subject areas

Automobility, Victorian/Edwardian society

Supervision

I supervise:
David Daniels, policing in Manchester and Salford, 1880–1905 (PhD)
Josh Butt, explaining the rise and fall of the Manchester motor industry, 1896–1939 (PhD)

Research outputs

I am exploring aspects of society and early motoring and cycling in the UK. This includes the context of ‘advice’ writers (1900-1910) who encouraged a wider motoring experience before World War I. (Motoring, here, in its broadest sense, including cycling, motor-cycling, charabancs etc.)

Current automobility projects include an analysis of the cycling and motoring pioneer S. F. Edge and his place in the wider motoring ‘movement’. This is expected to lead to a monograph on the place of Edge in early twentieth-century society; and also to a biography. I have been awarded £1810 by the Manchester Statistical Society to transcribe the Cheshire motor vehicle registrations to 1914 (to be published in three volumes by the Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society from 2017). I am a committee member of the Society of Automotive Historians of Britain; editor of its journal Aspects of Motoring History; and was chair of the Michael Sedgwick Award panel (2013–15) which identifies and rewards excellence in the research of aspects of British motoring history.

I am working on community-based projects such as:
- Manchester Motoring Memories, an oral history project of first-time motorists in the 1950s and 1960s, and which culminated in a Community Exhibition at the People’s History Museum.
- The club and sporting culture of early motorists and cyclists in the Manchester area, especially the Manchester Automobile Club.

My doctoral thesis (2001) was on the middling sorts of eighteenth-century Manchester, 1730-60, and I have transcribed and edited the Diary of Edmund Harrold (fl. 1712-5), wigmaker and bookseller (Ashgate, 2008).