Staff profile

I have recently rejoined Durham as Associate Professor (Research), working with Richard Huzzey, Cristina Leston-Bandeira (Leeds) and Anna Bocking-Welch (Liverpool) on the AHRC-ESRC Petitioning and People Power in Twentieth-Century Britain project (2020-23, AH/T003847/1).

My main research interests are the political culture and social history of modern Britain. My work has been published in leading journals such as Past & Present, English Historical Review, Historical Journal, Social Science History, Historical Research, and Cultural and Social History, among others. My first book, Politics personified: portraiture, caricature and visual culture in Britain, 1830-1880 was published by Manchester University Press in 2015.

My next book, A Nation of Petitioners: Petitions and Petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918 will published by Cambridge University Press in 2023, as part of their Modern British Histories series. This monograph will be a path-breaking study of UK political culture framed within a comparative context that addresses major debates within social and political science about representation, democratisation and collective action. The book will show how the ancient practice of petitioning was transformed into a mighty mechanism for mass politics in an era of democratisation but not democracy. 

The book draws on research from the 'Re-thinking petitions, Parliament, and people in the long nineteenth century, 1780-1918', research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2016-19, £367,072), which I led alongside Richard Huzzey. 

Between 2018 and 2019, I was Principal Investigator for the AHRC Research Network on Petitions and Petitioning from the Medieval Period to the Present (£44,253). I led a collaborative network of over fifty scholars from the USA, Europe, Israel and Australia, drawn from across the humanities and social sciences. I am currently editing a book based on the network that will provide the first comparative study of petitions and petitioning from the medieval period to the emergence of e-petitions in the early twenty-first century.

Before joining Durham I was Research Fellow on the History of Parliament Trust’s 1832-1868 House of Commons project (2009-13), and Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century British History (2013-16) and Lecturer in Modern British History (2019-20) at the University of Manchester. I completed my doctoral research at Queen Mary, University of London. 

• Modern British History
• Petitions in the United Kingdom, c. 1780-1918
• Popular Politics and Social Movements
• Print Culture
• Visual Culture

• 2020: Winner, Excellence in Academic Research Award, Research Staff Awards, Durham University:
• 2015: Fellow, Royal Historical Society:

Authored book

• Miller, H. (2023). A Nation of Petitioners: Petitions and Petitioning in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918. Cambridge University Press
• Miller, H. (2015). Politics personified: Portraiture, caricature and visual culture in Britain, c.1830–80. Manchester University Press

Chapter in book

• Huzzey, R., Janse, M., Miller, H., Oddens, J., & Waddell, B. (in press). Petitions and Petitioning in Historical Perspective. In Petitions and Petitioning in Europe and North America: From the Late Medieval Period to the Present. OUP for the British Academy
• Miller, H. (2018). Petitioning and Demonstrating. In D. Brown, R. Crowcroft, & G. Pentland (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 1800-2000 (452-468). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198714897.013.14
• Miller, H. (2017). Petition! Petition!! Petition!!!: Petitioning and the Organization of Public Opinion in Britain, c. 1780-1850. In H. te Velde, & M. Janse (Eds.), Organizing Democracy: Reflections on the Rise of Political Organizations in the Nineteenth Century (43-61). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50020-1_3
• Miller, H. (2015). Earl Grey. In D. Brack, R. Ingham, & T. Little (Eds.), British Liberal leaders: leaders of the Liberal Party, SDP and Liberal Democrats since 1828 (81-92). Biteback Publishing

Journal Article

• Huzzey, R., & Miller, H. (2022). Colonial Petitions, Colonial Petitioners, and the Imperial Parliament, c. 1780-1918. Journal of British Studies, 61(2), 261-289. https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2021.185
• Huzzey, R., & Miller, H. (2021). The Politics of Petitioning: Parliament, Government and Subscriptional Cultures in the United Kingdom, 1780-1918. History, 106(370), 221-243. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229x.13103
• Miller, H. (2021). The British Women's Suffrage Movement and the Practice of Petitioning, 1890-1914. Historical Journal, 64(2), 332-356. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x20000035
• Miller, H. (2021). Signatures of Conservatism: Petitioning, Popular Politics and Campaigns against Reform in Britain, 1780-1918. Historia y Política, 46, 149-174. https://doi.org/10.18042/hp.46.06
• Huzzey, R., & Miller, H. (2020). Petitions, Parliament and Political Culture: Petitioning the House of Commons, 1780-1918. Past & Present: A Journal of Historical Studies, 248(1), 123-164. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz061
• Miller, H. (2019). Introduction: The Transformation of Petitioning in the Long Nineteenth Century (1780-1914). Social Science History, 43(3), 409-429. https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2019.24
• Miller, H. (2017). Free Trade and Print Culture: Political Communication in Early Nineteenth-Century England. Cultural and Social History, 14(1), 35-54. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2017.1290968
• Miller, H. (2012). ‘Radicals, Tories or Monomaniacs? The Birmingham Currency Reformers in the House of Commons, 1832–67.’. Parliamentary History, 31(3), 354-377. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1750-0206.2012.00347.x
• Miller, H. (2012). ‘Popular Petitioning and the Corn Laws, 1833–46’. The English Historical Review, 127(527), 882-919. https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ces073
• Miller, H. (2009). ‘John Leech and the Shaping of the Victorian Cartoon: The Context of Respectability’. Victorian Periodicals Review, 42(3), 267-291. https://doi.org/10.1353/vpr.0.0087
• Miller, H. (2009). ‘The Problem with Punch’. Historical Research, 82(216), 285-302. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.2007.00457.x

Other (Print)

• Huzzey, R., & Miller, H. (in press). The Evolution of Petitioning in Europe and North America, 1850-2000. . British Academy