Benjamin Jackson

I am a social and cultural historian of Britain in the long eighteenth century. My research focuses on the history of gender, masculinities, and sexualities 1660–1832. My recently published monograph Material Masculinities: Men and Goods in Eighteenth-Century England (Manchester University Press, 2025) is the first book-length study of Englishmen’s material and consumer practices in the period.

I am currently a British Academy Research Fellow at the John Rylands Research Institute researching the professional, social, and masculine identities of Anglican clergymen 1660–1800 in Britain, Europe, and the British Empire. This research will provide the basis for my next book The Georgian Clergyman: At Home, In the Parish, and Abroad.

I am currently editing two collections of essays. With Hannah Yip (UoM Music), I am co-editing a volume on early modern clerical identities entitled Clerical lives in England and Wales, 1600-1800 which will be published by Manchester University Press in 2027.

I am also editing A Cultural History of Men and Masculinities in the Age of Enlightenment for Bloomsbury, which brings together a global cohort of scholars working on gender and masculinity in the eighteenth century. 

Before joining Manchester in 2024, I taught early modern history at the University of Birmingham (2021–2023) and undergraduate history at UCL (2019–2021) and QMUL (2017–2021).

After undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of York, I completed my PhD in History at Queen Mary, University of London in 2020 with Prof. Amanda Vickery. I have been awarded research fellowships by The Huntington Library, San Marino, The Clark Library, UCLA, the John Rylands Research Institute, and the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme. 

I primarily research the social, cultural and economic history of Britain in the long eighteenth century (c.1650-1850). My research interests include: 

• Gender, particularly masculinities, and sexuality
• Commercialisation, consumption, manufacturing
• Materiality and material culture 
• Social status and social change
• Domestic and familial life
• Mobility and travel
• Professionalisation and work 
• Religion, particularly Anglicanism, and religious lived experience
• Bodies and emotions 

I primarily engage with the following approaches in my work: 

• gender and sexuality 
• embodiment 
• emotional communities
• materiality 
• queerness-as-method 

Sources I particularly study are: 

• Ego-testimony (diaries, journals, commonplace books, letters)
• Legal and administrative records
• Material objects 
• Visual sources 
• Built environment 

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Member of the Social History Society 

Member of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies 

Member of the North American Centre for British Studies 

I am also a member of the Bodies, Emotions and Material Culture Collective at Manchester as well as part of the Centre for Sexualities and Cultures network. I serve on the John Rylands Management Board as PDR rep

PhD in History, Queen Mary, University of London (2016-2020)

MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York (2015-2016) 

BA in English and Related Literature, University of York (2012-2015)