Hannah Parkes

Profile

My research centres on the everyday experiences of Bradfordians in the 1970s and 1980s, using oral history interviews to explore how feelings of community, belonging, and exclusion were created and conceputalised in the city’s places and spaces. My interest in British social history was fostered during my undergraduate degree at the University of Edinburgh, where I was awarded the Annabella Kirkpatrick Prize for my dissertation, entitled ‘The Making of ‘Bradistan’: A Social History of South Asian Experience, 1954-1985’. I was awarded the Taught MA Scholarship by the School of History to continue my education at the University of Leeds, before starting my School of History funded PhD at Leeds in 2022.

I am currently teaching on the HIST1530 ‘The Making of the Twentieth-Century’ module for the second time. I am a research assistant for the interdisiplinary Reimagining Relationships with Urban Nature project. I also work as an Education Outreach Fellow, supporting school liason work by delivering progression and enhancement activities to schools and colleges across the country. 

Research interests

• Social history
• Urban history
• Spatial history
• Histories of the everyday
• Modern British history

Conference papers:

‘The Street’: Community, Belonging, and Exclusion in Bradford in the 1970s and 1980s’ 

• Ordinary Lives, Everyday People? University of East Anglia, April 2025
• PGR Seminar Series, April 2025

‘Valley Mentality’? Identities, Localities, and being a Bradfordian

• Ridings of Yorkshire Society, June 2025

• Re-imagining Relationships with Urban Nature

Qualifications

• MA (Hons) English Literature and History (First Class). The University of Edinburgh, 2015-2019
• MA Modern History (Distinction). The University of Leeds. 2021-2022