Professor Neil Fleming

Professor of Modern History

Institute of Arts and Humanities

History, Politics and Sociology

Contact Details

email: n.fleming@worc.ac.uk

Neil Fleming's research and teaching focusses on aspects of British, Irish and imperial history since the late nineteenth century.

Teaching & Research

Neil Fleming joined the 51ÊÓƵ in January 2011. He previously held lectureships at Cardiff University, Queen's University Belfast, and Glasgow Caledonian University, and was the 16th Fulbright-Robertson Visiting Professor of British History, Westminster College, Missouri. 

Research Students

  • Linda Pike
  • Maddie Hale

Former Research Students

Teaching and Research mobility

  • Åbo Akademi, Finland (Åbo Akademi)
  • Università Roma Tre, Italy (Erasmus)
  • Karlstad Universitet, Sweden (Erasmus)
  • Turun Yliopisto, Finland (Erasmus)
  • Avignon Université, France (Erasmus)
  • Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany (Erasmus)
  • Westminster College, Missouri, United States (Fulbright)

Awards and Fellowships

  • Research Grant, Historical Society of the Episcopal Church, United States (2024)
  • Mary Louise Nickerson Travel Grant, Osler Library of the History of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada (2024)
  • Research Grant, British Institute for the Study of Iraq (2022)
  • Research Grant, Oxfordshire Architectural and Historical Society (2022)
  • Research Grant, Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society (2022)
  • Research Award, Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society (2016) 
  • Visiting Fellow, St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford (2013) 
  • Senior Associate Member, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford (2013) 
  • Scouloudi Research Award, Institute of Historical Research, University of London (2013) 
  • Research Award, Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (2013) 
  • Caird Research Fellow, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (2013) 
  • Anderson Fund, Society for Nautical Research (2012)
  • T.W. Moody Memorial Fund, Trinity College, Dublin (2002) 
  • Eoin O’Mahony Bursary, Royal Irish Academy (2001)

Professional Bodies

  • Fellow, Royal Historical Society
  • Honorary Research Fellow, Cardiff University
  • Associate Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
  • Member, Honourable Society of the Inner Temple
  • Fellow, Higher Education Academy
  • Member, British Institute for the Study of Iraq

Publications

Books

Aristocracy, Democracy and Dictatorship: The Political Papers of the Seventh Marquess of Londonderry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Royal Historical Society, 2022)

Ireland and Partition: Contexts and Consequences (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2021) (with James H. Murphy)

Histories, Memories and Representations of Being Young in the First World War (Cham: Palgrave, 2020) (with Maggie Andrews and Marcus Morris)

Britannia’s Zealots, Volume I: Tradition, Empire and the Forging of the Conservative Right (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019)

Charles Stewart Parnell and His Times: A Bibliography (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Press 2011) (with Alan O'Day)

Ireland and Anglo-Irish Relations since 1800: Critical Essays (3 vols, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) (with Alan O'Day)

The Longman Handbook of Modern Irish History since 1800 (London: Pearson, 2005) (with Alan O'Day)

The Marquess of LondonderryAristocracy, Power and Politics in Britain and Ireland (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005; revised edition, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024)


Articles

'Empire, Community, and the Limits of "Sea-Mindedness": The Navy League and Worcester, c. 1896–1914', Midland History, 48:3 (2023): 328–351

'Introduction: New Perspectives on Worcester since the Seventeenth Century', Midland History, 48:3 (2023): 263–270

'Paternalism, Conflict and Decline: The seventh Marquess of Londonderry and the Coal Industry, 1906–1947', Durham County Local History Society Journal, 87 (2023): 7–43

'Women and Lancashire Conservatism between the Wars', Women's History Review, 26:3 (2017): 329-349

'Lancashire Conservatives, Tariff Reform, and Indian Responsible Government', Contemporary British History, 30:2 (2016): 151-176

'Conquest, Empire and the Struggle for Supremacy', War in History, 23:2 (2016): 251-256

'The Imperial Maritime League: British Navalism, Conflict and the Radical Right, c. 1907-1920', War in History, 23.3 (2016): 296-322

'Diehard Conservatives and the Appeasement of Nazi Germany, 1935-1940', History: The Journal of the Historical Association, 100:341 (2015): 412-435

'Political Extremes and Extremist Politics', Political Studies Review, 12:3 (2014): 395-401

'Diehard Conservatism, Mass Democracy, and Indian Constitutional Reform, c. 1918-1935', Parliamentary History, 32:2 (2013): 337-360

'Cabinet Government, British Imperial Security, and the World Disarmament Conference, 1932-1934' War in History, 18:1 (2011): 62-84

"Incorrigibly Plural: New Histories of Ulster and Northern Ireland", Twentieth Century British History, 21:1 (2010): 110-117

'Echoes of Britannia: Television History, Empire and the Critical Public Sphere', Contemporary British History, 25:1 (2010): 1-22

'The Press, Empire and Historical Time: The Times and Indian Self-Government, c.1911-1947', Media History, 16:2 (2010): 183-198

'The First Government of Northern Ireland, Education Reform, and the Failure of Anti-Populist Unionism, 1921-1925', Twentieth Century British History, 18:2 (2007): 146-169

Chapters

‘The Government of India Act 1858’, in Chris Monaghan (ed.), Leading Works in the History of the Constitution (London: Routledge, 2025).

‘Women and the Conservative Monday Club’, in Ruth Davidson, Farah Hussain, Lyndsey Jenkins and Anna Muggeridge (eds), Women, Power and Politics in Britain, 1945–1997 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025).

‘Ulster Unionism and the Irish Convention, 1917–1918’, in Alan Parkinson and Brian M. Walker (eds), Ulster 1912–22: Change, Controversy, Conflict (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2024): 81-112.

‘Navalism and Masculinity before the First World War’, in Joanne Begiato, Karen Downing, and Johnathan Thayer (eds), Negotiating Masculinities and Modernity in the Maritime World, 1815–1940: A Sailor’s Progress? (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022): 245-265.

'The Conservative Right, Ulster Unionism, and the Partition of Ireland', in N.C. Fleming and James H. Murphy (eds), Ireland and Partition: Contexts and Consequences (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2021): 283-303.

'Introduction', in N.C. Fleming and James H. Murphy (eds), Ireland and Partition: Contexts and Consequences (Clemson, SC: Clemson University Press, 2021): 1-11.

‘The Navy League, the Rising Generation, and the First World War’, in Maggie Andrews, N.C. Fleming and Marcus Morris (eds), Histories, Memories and Representations of Being Young in the First World War (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020): 97-118.

'Education since the late eighteenth century', in Liam Kennedy and Phillip Ollerenshaw (eds), Ulster since 1600: Politics, Economy, and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013): 211-227.

'Accommodation, conciliation and cooperation: a Gladstonian legacy', in D. George Boyce and Alan O'Day (eds), Gladstone and Ireland: Politics, Religion and Nationality in the Victorian Age (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010): 233-255 (with Alan O'Day).

'Gladstone and the Ulster Question', in D. George Boyce and Alan O'Day (eds), Gladstone and Ireland: Politics, Religion and Nationality in the Victorian Age (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010): 140-161.

'Leadership, the middle-classes and Ulster unionism since the late nineteenth century', in Fintan Lane (ed.), Politics, Society and the Middle Class in Modern Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009): 212-229.

'Introduction’, in N.C. Fleming and Alan O’Day (eds), Ireland and Anglo-Irish Relations since 1800: Critical Essays, Volume III: From the Treaty to the Present (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008): xiii–xxv.

'Aristocratic appeasement: Lord Londonderry, Nazi Germany, and the promotion of Anglo-German misunderstanding', Cardiff Historical Papers, 4 (Cardiff: Cardiff University, 2007): 1-36.

'The landed elite, power, and Ulster Unionism', in D. George Boyce and Alan O’Day (eds), The Ulster Crisis, 1885-1921 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006): 86-104.

'Landlords, power and loyalism in late-Victorian Ulster', in Christine Kinealy and Roger Swift (eds), Politics and Power in Victorian Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006): 143-154.

'Old and new Unionism: The seventh Marquess of Londonderry, 1905-1921', in D. George Boyce and Alan O'Day (eds), Ireland in Transition, 1867-1921 (London: Routledge, 2004): 223-240.

'Lord Londonderry and Ulster politics', 1921-6, in Joost Augusteijn, Mary Ann Lyons and Deirdre McMahon (eds), Irish History: A Research Yearbook, 2 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003): 72-80.

Shorter articles

'The Church of England and Iraq's Assyrian Minority, c. 19201939', The British Institute for the Study of Iraq Newsletter, no. 41 (2024): 1718.

, Monument of Fame: The Lambeth Palace Library Blog (24 May 2024). 

, History of Education Society Blog (13 May 24). 

'', Historical Transactions [Royal Historical Society] (20 Sept. 2022)

History UK (13 Jan. 2020)

‘The Empire Strikes Back? The British Empire at the Movies’, Real History Magazine,1(2019), 12-13

'Dr Alan O'Day (1940-2017): Historian of Ireland', Perspectives on History: The Magazine of the American Historical Association, 55:9 (2017):46

'The rise of Women Conservatives in inter-war Lancashire', Conservative History Journal, 2:5 (2017): 12-16

History & Policy (13 Oct. 2016)

, History & Policy (8 July 2016)

, History & Policy (22 April 2016)

, History & Policy (31 March 2016)

, Four Nations History Network Blog (26 Feb. 2016)

, History Matters (10 Feb. 2016)

, History Matters (5 Oct. 2015)

, British Library Untold Lives Blog (1 Sept. 2015)

'Stanley Baldwin, The Times, and Indian self-government', Conservative History Journal, 2:2 (2013): 8-12

, History & Policy (31 May 2012)

'A change of mind? [part 2] Churchill on India', Memo: The Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in the United States, 33 (Winter, 2010): 10-13

'A change of mind? [part 1] Churchill on Ireland', Memo: The Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in the United States, 31 (Summer, 2009): 10-12

'Aristocratic rule? Ulster unionism and Northern Ireland', History Ireland, 15.6 (Nov./Dec., 2007): 26-31

'The Londonderry Herr: Lord Londonderry and the appeasement of Nazi Germany', History Ireland, 13.1 (Jan./Feb., 2005): 31-35

New Ireland, same old heroes, Fortnight, 405 (June 2002): 33

'Lord Londonderry and education reform in 1920s Northern Ireland', History Ireland, 9.1 (Spring, 2001): 36-39

External Responsibilities

  • Editorial Board Member, New Historical Perspectives, Royal Historical Society (2022-26)
  • Chief External Examiner for History, Leeds Beckett University (2022-26)
  • External Examiner, MScR History, University of Edinburgh (2021)
  • External Member, Programme Validation Panel, York St John University (2020)
  • Off College Peer Reviewer, Arts and Humanities Research Council (2018 and 2020)
  • External Examiner, BA Hons in History, Bath Spa University (2017-22)
  • External Examiner, PhD in History, University of Ulster (2017 and 2018)
  • External Assessor, REF Preparation Exercise, Department of History, University of Bristol (2017)
  • Steering Committee Member (2015-19) and Research Officer (2017-19), History UK
  • Peer Reviewer, Palgrave Macmillan (2012 and 2013)
  • Executive Committee Member, British International History Group (2012-17)
  • Executive Committee Member, British Fulbright Scholars Association (2011-14)
  • Peer Reviewer, Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2010)
  • Technical Editor, John Wiley & Sons (2005)

Peer-reviewed articles for the Historical Journal, Twentieth Century British History, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Irish Historical Studies, Media History, Women's History Review, Parliamentary History, Diplomacy and Statecraft, History of Education, Contemporary British History, Brill Research Perspectives, Britain and the World, and the Women's History Magazine.