Daniel Maudlin

Academic profile

Professor Daniel Maudlin

Professor
School of Society and Culture (Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business)

The Global Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Daniel's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

Goal 10: SDG 10 - Reduced InequalitiesGoal 11: SDG 11 - Sustainable Cities and CommunitiesGoal 14: SDG 14 - Life Below WaterGoal 16: SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

About Daniel

Daniel Maudlin specialises in the material world of the British Empire and its global contexts, 1600 - 1900, primarily focussing on the North Atlantic  - British Isles, North America, the Caribbean, West Africa - and the Indian Subcontinent. He studied Art History at the University of St Andrews both as an undergraduate (MA (Hons), 1996) and postgraduate (PhD, 2002). He is currently Professor in History and Art History at the ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓÆµ where he teaches material and spatial hstories across BA History and BA Art History and leads modules in 'Eighteenth-Century Empires', 'Legacies of Empire' and 'Public History and Heritage'. He previously taught at the University of St Andrews and the University of Glasgow and led the University of Pennsylvania's European Conservation Summer School running live projects at British historic sites and collections. He has been a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow at Dalhousie University, Canada, Research Fellow at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Research Fellow at the Winterthur Museum, Visiting Fellow at UPenn, Visiting Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Scottish Studies, University of Guelph, Canada. Research grants include a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellowship, AHRC Network Grant, AHRC Mid Career Fellowship, AHRC Impact Fellowship and Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. He has been awarded the Allen G. Noble Prize by the International Society for Landscape, Place and Material Culture; the Jeffrey Cook Prize by the Interntational Assocation for the Study of Traditional Environments and History Book of the Year by the Scotsman for his first book, The Highland House Transformed. Before moving into academia he worked in the museums and heritage sector including: the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice; V&A - Royal Malay Museums; National Galleries of Scotland and the furniture department of Bonhams Auctioneers, Bond St, London. 

Current research projects include Project Lead on Objects, Spaces, Sounds, a transdisciplinary, multi-institution study of imperialism and intercultural placemaking in Hudson Bay, co-created with the Indigenous Cree communities of Hudson Bay, Canada (£750,000 AHRC bid in preparation to submit 2025).  This year I am also engaged with an AHRC Impact Accelerator Fellowship with the National Trust, Re- Thinking Eighteenth-Century Sites, re-thinkin curatorial approaches to eighteenth century house and collections across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I am also part of the interdisciplinary team leading the £1.2 million EPSRC-funded ICONIC Project exploring the health benefits of heritage sites for excluded groups through remote digital access (extended reality).

He has  two major monographs currently in-press with Oxford University Press: A Night at the Inn: material culture and the elite experience of empire, 1650 -150; and, The Material World of the British Empire, 1700 - 1850 (Oxford History of Art (OUP, 2026). Previous publications include  Inner Empire: Architecture and Empire in the British Isles with G. A. Bremner (MUP, 2024); Building the British Atlantic World with Bernard L. Herman (UNC Press, 2016), winner of the Allen G Noble Book Prize; and, The Highland House Transformed: Architecture and Identity on the edge of Britain (EUP, 2009), Scotsman History Book of the Year. I also write on theoretical approaches to everyday spaces, including On the Occupation, Appropriation and Interpretation of Buildings with Marcel Vellinga (Routledge, 2014); 'Concepts of the Vernacular' with Robert Brown in the SAGE Handbook of Architectural Theory (SAGE, 2012). 

He teaches material histories across BA History and BA Art History and am programme leader for MA Heritage Theory and Practice. He also run the spin-out heritage consultancy, . Plymouth Heritage Praxis maintains a portfolio of projects increasingly focused on the health and wellbeing benefits of the historic environment for different groups and communities including young adults, older adults, LGBT and asylum seekers. PHP works through grant-funded partnerships and contract research with the heritage sector. Current partners include the National Trust, Historic England, Dartmoor National Park, The Box, National Marine Park and Powderham Castle.

Teaching

Programme Lead 
  • MA Heritage Theory and Practice, 2018 –
  • MRes Architecture, 2008 - 14
Cultural Contexts Stream Lead (Stage 1 – 3), BA  Architecture, 2008 – 14 Module Lead
  •  ‘History and Heritage’, BA History & Art Historyu (Year 1 core module), 2018 -
  • ‘History and Heritage: Legacies of Empire’, BA History, Art History and English (Year 2 option), 2018 - 
  • ‘The British Atlantic World’ (Year 3 option), 2018 - 
PhD supervisor
I have successfully supervised a range of PhD students within the fields of cultural heritage, architectural history and theory and material culture from prison graffiti in Malaysia to female agency in the British country house  and the heritage space of rivers.