Dr Hannah Ewence | University of Chester

Head of Humanities, Cultures and Environment

Hannah Ewence (PhD, FRHistS, SFHEA) is Head of Humanities, Cultures and Environment at the University of Chester; leading the subject provision for Geography and Environment, History and Archaeology, and Theology and Religious Studies. She is an experienced academic leader, with a proven track record in student recruitment and retention, inclusive curriculum design, learning and teaching enhancement, and a commitment to staff mentoring, student support, and research excellence.

Hannah's core training is as a Modern Historian, working within the parallel fields of Jewish Studies, and Minority Studies. She has published extensively on nineteenth and twentieth century British-Jewish History, modern histories of migration within and through the Anglophone world, and the histories and legacies of British colonialism.

Hannah remains an active lecturer within the History programme team, delivering modules on Britain and the end of Empire, and contributing to a range of team-taught modules.

Hannah is able to offer postgraduate supervision in most areas of late nineteenth and twentieth century social and cultural British history, but especially topics which focus on immigration, empire and colonialism, and minority studies.

Until recently, Hannah held two consecutive secondments in learning and teaching leadership which helped to nurture and support teaching excellence amongst colleagues. This work included the development of a faculty-wide learning and teaching strategy, and leadership of a pilot project into inclusive curriculum design. Hannah is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Hannah's research interests lie broadly within minority studies, and the modern histories of migration within and to the western world.

Hannah has written and published most extensively on British-Jewish history from the late nineteenth century through to the twenty first century, and on responses to immigrants and refugees arriving in Britain from elsewhere. Her first monograph examined cultural and socio-political representations of Eastern European Jews travelling to and arriving in Britain, arguing that anxiety about migrant Jews expressed itself differently across the different sites associated with migration, such as border zones, ports and points of arrival.

Hannah has also conducted research into the reception of other immigrant groups in Britain, and was recently the recipient of grants from both the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Heritage Lottery Fund to research the presence of and response to Belgian refugees and combatants in Cheshire between 1914 – 1919. Hannah was also the lead for a collaborative cross-departmental outreach project ‘A Global History in One City’ which looks to showcase the truly global significance of Chester’s long and rich past. This project comprises a documentary film series (featuring colleagues from across the department), blog posts and a website, and resources for schools. It has been featured on BBC Radio, in the national press and as part of the Chester Heritage Festival.

Hannah is currently co-leading a community partnership project with Chester Cathedral which seeks to support research into the sensitive, colonial-era heritage of the site and its collections.

Books

H. Ewence, The Alien Jew in the British Imagination: Space, Mobility and Territoriality, 1881 – 1905 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

H. Ewence and T. Grady, (eds.), Minorities and the First World War: From War to Peace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

H. Ewence and H. Spurling (eds.), Visualising Jews through the Ages: Literary and Material Representations of Jewishness and Judaism, (London and New York: Routledge, 2015).

H. Ewence and T. Kushner (eds.), Whatever Happened to British Jewish Studies? (Edgware: Vallentine Mitchell, 2011).

Journals

H. Ewence and T. Kushner (eds.), Whatever Happened to British Jewish Studies? Special issue of Jewish Culture and History, vol. 12, nos. 1-2, (Winter 2011).

H. Ewence and H. Spurling (eds.), Image Conscious: Jewish Visuals and Visualising Jews through the Ages, Special Issue of Jewish Culture and History, vol. 12, no. 3, (Winter 2010).

Articles

H. Ewence, ‘When they Get to the Border’, History Today, vol. 70, issue 12 (December 2020).

H. Ewence, ‘Belgian Refugees in Cheshire: “Place” and the Invisibility of the Displaced’, Immigrants and Minorities, vol. 36, no. 3 (2018), pp. 232-257.

H. Ewence, ‘Blurring the Boundaries of Difference: Dracula, the Empire and the Jew’, Jewish Culture and History, vol. 12, nos. 1-2, (Winter 2011), pp. 213-222.

H. Ewence, ‘The Jew in the Eruv, the Jew in the Suburb: Contesting the Public Face and the Private Space of British Jewry’, Jewish Culture and History, vol. 12, no. 3, (Winter 2010), pp. 477-486.

Book Sections

‘Bridging the Gap between ‘War’ and ‘Peace’: The Case of Belgian Refugees in Britain’, in H. Ewence and T. Grady (eds.), Minorities and the First World War: From War to Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 89-116.

H. Ewence, ‘‘Hands across the tea’: Renegotiating Jewish Identity and Belonging in Post-war Britain’, in M. Diemling and L. Ray (eds.), Boundaries, Identity and Belonging in Modern Judaism, (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 148-161.

H. Ewence, ‘The Jew in the Eruv, the Jew in the Suburb: Contesting the Public Face and the Private Space of British Jewry’, in H. Ewence and H. Spurling (eds.) Visualising Jews through the Ages: Literary and Material Representations of Jewishness and Judaism (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 137-152.

H. Ewence and H. Spurling, ‘Introduction: Visualising Jews: An Introduction to Literary and Material Representations of Jewishness and Judaism Through the Ages’, in H. Ewence and H. Spurling (eds.) Visualizing Jews through the Ages: Literary and Material Representations of Jewishness and Judaism (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), pp. 1-13.

H. Ewence, ‘Memories of Suburbia: Autobiographical Fiction and Minority Narratives’, in J. Tumblety (ed.) Memory and History: A Guide to Working with Memory as Source and Subject, (New York and London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 160-176.

H. Ewence, ‘Blurring the Boundaries of Difference: Dracula, the Empire and the Jew’, in H. Ewence and T. Kushner (eds.), Whatever Happened to British Jewish Studies, (Edgware: Vallentine Mitchell, 2012), pp. 221-230.

H. Ewence and T. Kushner, ‘Whatever Happened to British Jewish Studies? In Search of Contexts’, in H. Ewence and T. Kushner (eds.), Whatever Happened to British Jewish Studies, (Edgware: Vallentine Mitchell, 2012), pp. 1-28.

H. Ewence, ‘Between Daydream and Nightmare: Fin de Siècle Jewish Journeys and the British Imagination’ in G. Alderman (ed.) New Directions in Anglo-Jewish History, (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010), pp. 1-24.

Public History

H. Ewence and T. Grady, ‘Global Chester: The long arc of history concentrated in a single city’, Inside History Magazine (Autumn 2021, forthcoming)

H. Ewence with P. Hirst, ‘Chester’s Legacies of Empire’, January 2021.

H. Ewence, ‘Chester’s Legacies of Empire’, University of Chester, December 2020.

In Preparation

Article: ‘Moving Out to be ‘In’: The Suburbanisation of London Jewry, 1900-1939’.

Article: ‘Where Black Lives Matter? Making Space for the Imperial Past in a Small City Setting’.

BA (Southampton)
MA (Southampton)
PhD (Southampton)
SFHEA