Lecturer In History
School of Arts and Humanities
Dr Rachel Duffett joined the History team at UCS as a part-time lecturer in January 2010.
Dr Duffett has a BA in English Literature and an MA in History. Her PhD thesis on the significance of food in the lives of the soldiers of the First World War was completed at Essex University in 2009 with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her main research field is the military, social and cultural impact of warfare in the twentieth century. Other areas of interest include the history, anthropology and sociology of food, and the use of literature as an historical source.
Teaching and Other Responsibilities
The Home Front: 1914-1918 and 1939-1945|.
Research Interests and Publications
In addition to the impact of warfare in the twentieth century, I am interested in the history, anthropology and sociology of food and the social and cultural history of nineteenth and twentieth century Britain; my undergraduate degree in English Literature has led to a particular interest in the use of literature, especially the nineteenth century novel, as an historical source.
The Stomach for Fighting: Food and the Soldiers of The Great War (Manchester University Press, 2012).
Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe, edited with Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (Ashgate, August 2011), includes an authored chapter ‘British Army Provisioning on the Western Front’.
‘Beyond the Ration: Sharing and Scrounging on the Western Front’ in Twentieth Century British History (accepted for Volume 23, 2012, currently available online).
'A Taste of Army Life: Food, Identity and the Rankers of the First World War’ in Cultural and Social History (accepted, Volume 9, 2012).
‘The Stomach for Fighting’, Family History Magazine (December, 2011).
‘What do we want with eggs and ham?' BBC History Magazine (December, 2009).
'A War Unimagined: Food and the Rank and File Soldiers of the First World War' in Jessica Meyer (ed.), British Popular Culture and the First World War (Brill, 2008).
Selected Conference Papers and Presentations:
Forthcoming ‘The Stophers of Suffolk and the Great War’, Social History Conference, Brighton.
Forthcoming ‘From Sweffling to the Somme’, The Great War: Localities and Regional Identities Conference, Manchester.
Invited speaker at Suffolk Local History Council AGM, November 2011.
Invited speaker The First World War Reappraised seminar at the IWM, October 2011.
‘Sharing on the Western Front’,32nd Conference of the International Commission on the Anthropology of Food, University of Leiden, August 2011.
‘Of Meat and Men: Beef, Soldiers and the British Army, 1914-1918’, Food and Identities Conference, UCLAN, June 2011.
Guest lecturer on the First World War Education Day at IWM Duxford, November 2010.
Invited speaker at The Local Population Studies Society Annual Conference on 'Famine, Diet and Nutrition', April 2010.
'Food and the Soldier', for The Friends of the National Army Museum, February 2010.
'Home Fires Burning: Supporting the Soldiers of The Great War', joint talk with Professor Michael Roper in conjunction with the University of Essex's Arts on 5 exhibition of Steve McQueen's 'Queen and Country', November 2009
'British Army Provisioning on the Western Front', at the 11th Symposium of the International Commission for Research into European Food History, Paris, September 2009.
'100 Years of Army Rations', Essex University sponsored exhibit at Colchester Military Festival, July 2009.
'Food and Identity in the British Army', Social History Society Conference, Warwick, April 2009.
'A Taste of Home: Parcels on the Western Front', Essex Book Festival, March 2009.
Other Media:
Selected to participate in AHRC-BBC workshop to develop programming for the centenary of the First World War, February 2012.
Interviewed for BBC4 documentary series Bullets, Boots and Bandages shown February 2012.
BBC History Magazine podcast, December 2009.
Featured in East Anglian Daily Times, February 2009.
BBC Radio Essex, on rankers' food on the Western Front, November 2008.
Featured in Colchester Gazette, November 2008.