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

• Britain and Continental Europe
• Britain and Continental Europe
• Early Modern
• Modern
• Political Cultures

• Petitions and Petitioning from the Medieval Period to the Present
• Petitions, Parliament, and People

• https://durham.academia.edu/HenryMiller
• https://humblepetitioners.wordpress.com/

• 2018: Petitions and Petitioning from the Medieval Period to the Present(£35402.46 from AHRC)

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

Authored book

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

Chapter in book

• Miller, Henry (2018). 'Petitioning and Demonstrating'. In The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 1800-2000. Brown, David, Crowcroft, Robert & Pentland, Gordon Oxford: Oxford University Press. 452-468.
• Miller, Henry (2017). 'Petition! Petition!! Petition!!!: Petitioning and the Organization of Public Opinion in Britain, c. 1780-1850'. In Organizing Democracy: Reflections on the Rise of Political Organizations in the Nineteenth Century. te Velde, Henk & Janse, Maartje Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. 43-61.
• Miller, Henry (2015). 'Earl Grey'. In British Liberal leaders: leaders of the Liberal Party, SDP and Liberal Democrats since 1828. Brack, Duncan, Ingham, Robert & Little, Tony London: Biteback Publishing. 81-92.

Edited Journal

• Miller, Henry (2019). The Transformation of Petitioning, 1780-1914, Special Issue. Social Science History, 43 (3).

Journal Article

• Miller, Henry (2021). Signatures of Conservatism: Petitioning, Popular Politics and Campaigns against Reform in Britain, 1780-1918. Historia y Política 46: 149-174.
• Miller, Henry (2021). The British Women's Suffrage Movement and the Practice of Petitioning, 1890-1914. Historical Journal 64(2): 332-356.
• Huzzey, Richard & Miller, Henry (2020). Petitions, Parliament and Political Culture: Petitioning the House of Commons, 1780-1918. Past & Present 248(1): 123-164.
• Miller, Henry (2019). Introduction: The Transformation of Petitioning in the Long Nineteenth Century (1780-1914). Social Science History 43(3): 409-429.
• Miller, Henry (2017). Free Trade and Print Culture: Political Communication in Early Nineteenth-Century England. Cultural and Social History 14(1): 35-54.
• Miller, Henry (2012). ‘Popular Petitioning and the Corn Laws, 1833–46’. English Historical Review 127(527): 882-919.
• Miller, Henry (2012). ‘Radicals, Tories or Monomaniacs? The Birmingham Currency Reformers in the House of Commons, 1832–67.’. Parliamentary History 31(3): 354-377.
• Miller, Henry (2009). ‘John Leech and the Shaping of the Victorian Cartoon: The Context of Respectability’. Victorian Periodicals Review 42(3): 267-291.
• Miller, Henry (2009). ‘The Problem with Punch’. Historical Research 82(216): 285-302.