Oxford Historical Monographs (OHM)

Oxford Historical Monographs (OHM) is a series for the publication of Oxford University DPhil theses whose content is historical. It is published by Oxford University Press (OUP).

The Oxford Historical Monographs series exists to publish some of the best Oxford University DPhil theses on historical subjects. Since receiving its current name in 1965, the OHM series has featured more than 250 titles, including the first books of many of today’s leading historians; a list of those still available to buy can be found on the Oxford University Press website. The series is run by an editorial Committee drawn from members of the History Faculty.

The Committee receives the examiners’ reports of all successful DPhil candidates in History; it also considers relevant reports from other faculties when these are drawn to our attention. Most OHM books derive from History theses, but dissertations on historical topics generally are also considered. The catchment area is wide, and books are published on all aspects of late antique, medieval and modern history. Some recent examples can be found below.

Examiners in History are specifically invited to comment in their reports on the suitability of a thesis to be considered for publication in the series, and they often do so. Supervisors are likewise encouraged to draw likely publications to the Committee’s attention. Members of the Committee consult extensively and informally with examiners, supervisors and others.

Once the examiners’ reports are received, authors are asked for copies of theses which the Committee are interested in pursuing. Decisions are reached as soon as possible, but since the process of consideration always includes at least one external reading of the thesis, it can take time. Priority is given to work which, besides incorporating the best new scholarship, is reasonably accessible, readable and marketable, and which is better communicated in the form of a book than as a series of articles.

The amount of revision a given thesis is likely to need is also considered – the rule of thumb is that the process of turning a dissertation into a book should not take more than about a year or eighteen months, though it is recognised that, given their other commitments, some of our authors may need longer than that in practice.

about 10% of the historical theses considered are published – that is, about 6 to 8 books a year – and OHM represents the only route through which recent Oxford University DPhil theses will be considered for publication by OUP.

Politics, Polemic, and Political Thought During the French Wars of Religion: The Life of Pierre de Belloy, c.1550–1611

M. J. M. Innes

12 February 2026

Belloy is known to historians principally as a forerunner to seventeenth-century theorists of absolute monarchy and as a proponent of religious toleration. In testing those claims, this book, the first work devoted to Belloy's life and thought, makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role of legal thinking and legal rhetoric in early modern French political writing.

A Century of Asia Minor Refugees in Greece: Flight, Fight, and Fraternity

Marilena Anastasopoulou

19 February 2026

This book is a comparative—intergenerational and interregional—history of Asia Minor memories and identities of forced displacement that examines the multilayered relationship between contemporary attitudes and refugee past. In light of the centenary of the Asia Minor population transfer and the current migration and refugee crises, this study explores refugee memories and identities of expulsion, their intergenerational transmission, and the way that people with these memories think about subsequent migrations.

Transnational Women's Liberation: Feminist Activism in the US, UK, and France, 1967–79

Tess Little

26 March 2026

Across different cities, countries, and continents, the women's liberation movement grew from the grassroots, beginning with small discussion groups in the late 1960s to thousands marching in the streets less than a decade later. Political positions varied and methods of struggle were diverse, from consciousness-raising, street theatre, and squatting, to feminist bookshops, healthcare services, and refuges for women escaping domestic violence.

The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968–1989

Matt Myers

21 March 2025

The European left seemed to be in rude health during the 1970s. Never had so many political parties committed to representing the working class been in power simultaneously across the continent. New forms of mobilisation led by female, immigrant, and young wage-earners seemed to reflect the growing strength of the workers' movement rather than its pending obsolescence. Parties and trade unions grew rapidly as a diverse new generation entered the ranks. Why did the left's forward march halt so abruptly?

Communism, Cold War, and Revolution: The Indonesian Communist Party in West Java, 1949-1966

Matthew Woolgar

22 May 2025

During the 1950s and first half of the 1960s the Indonesian Communist Party grew from a few thousand members to become the third largest communist party in the world, before it was annihilated in a violent purge in 1965-6 that saw perhaps half a million alleged communists killed.

Indian Prisoners of War in Japanese Captivity during World War Two

Kevin Noles

31 July 2025

During World War Two some 67,000 Indian personnel of the British Indian Army were captured by Imperial Japanese forces, including a large number at the surrender of Singapore in February 1942. This book, the first of its kind, critically examines why these colonial Prisoners of War (POW) were largely forgotten in the post-war period, and therefore represents a case study in the formation of British wartime historical memory.

Thomas Hobbes and Political Thought in Ireland c.1660- c.1730: The Leviathan Released

Matthew Ward

25 January 2024

Thomas Hobbes and Political Thought in Ireland, c.1660-1730 is a history of political thought in Ireland, told from the perspective of the reception in that country of Thomas Hobbes, the English philosopher. Unlike Hobbes, political thought in Ireland has received little attention from historians: it is sometimes assumed that there is not much of a subject to study. The reception of Hobbes in Ireland forces us to challenge this assumption.

The Spiritual Lives and Manuscript Cultures of Eighteenth-Century English Women: Writing Religious Communities

Cynthia Aalders

20 May 2024

The Spiritual Lives and Manuscript Cultures of Eighteenth-Century English Women explores the vital and unexplored ways in which women's life writings acted to undergird, guide, and indeed shape religious communities. Through an exploration of various significant but understudied personal relationships- including mentorship by older women, spiritual friendship, and care for nonbiological children-the book demonstrates the multiple ways in which women were active in writing religious communities.

Text and Textuality in Early Medieval Iberia: The Written and The World, 711-1031

Graham Barrett

27 July 2023

Text and Textuality in Early Medieval Iberia is a study of the functions and conceptions of writing and reading, documentation and archives, and the role of literate authorities in the Christian kingdoms of the northern Iberian Peninsula between the Muslim conquest of 711 and the fall of the Islamic caliphate at Córdoba in 1031.

England and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages: Papal Privileges in European Perspective, c. 680-1073

Benjamin Savill

29 August 2023

England and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages: Papal Privileges in European Perspective, c. 680-1073 provides the first dedicated, book-length study of interactions between England and the papacy throughout the early middle ages. It takes as its lens the extant English record of papal privileges: legal diplomas drawn-up on metres-long scrolls of Egyptian papyrus, acquired by pilgrim-petitioners within the city of Rome, and then brought back to Britain to negotiate local claims and conflicts.

The Muslim Secular: Parity and the Politics of India's Partition

Dr Amar Sohal

31 August 2023

Concerned with the fate of the minority in the age of the nation-state, Muslim political thought in modern South Asia has often been associated with religious nationalism and the creation of Pakistan. The Muslim Secular complicates that story by reconstructing the ideas of three prominent thinker-actors of the Indian freedom struggle: the Indian National Congress leader Abul Kalam Azad, the popular Kashmiri politician Sheikh Abdullah, and the nonviolent Pashtun activist Abdul Ghaffar Khan.

Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000-1250

Dr Lorenzo Tabarrini

14 September 2023

This book examines the forms of estate management in the countryside of Florence and Lucca between the eleventh and the middle of the thirteenth centuries. It argues that their change reflects wider transformations of medieval economic patterns, and specifically the surge in overall demand that occurred in the decades bridging the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries.

British Philanthropy in the Globalizing World: Entrepreneurs and Evangelicals, 1756-1840

Dr Roshan Allpress

20 November 2023

Between 1756 and 1840, philanthropy in the British world grew from the domain of small, associational committees to a vast enterprise of philanthropic and humanitarian societies with global reach. British Philanthropy in the Globalizing World tells the story of this movement, from its inception in small networks of mercantile and religious entrepreneurs to its signal projects and achievements in the abolition of slavery, in evangelical missionary societies, Bible societies, and in the early indigenous rights movement.

Designs on Democracy: Architecture and the Public in Interwar London

Neal Shasore

20 September 2022

Designs on Democracy examines a pivotal period in the formation of the modern profession of architecture in Britain. It shows how architects sought to meet the newly articulated demands of a mass democracy in the wake of the First World War. It does so by providing a vivid picture of architectural culture in interwar London, the Imperial metropolis, drawing on histories of design, practice, professionalism, and representation.

Shadow of a Taxman: Who Funded the Irish Revolution?

R. J. C. Adams

19 April 2022

Shadow of a Taxman investigates how the unrecognised Irish Republic's money was solicited, collected, transmitted, and safeguarded, as well as who the financial backers were and what might have influenced their decision to contribute. The Republic's quest for funds took its emissaries as far afield as New York, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, and Melbourne, as well as virtually every parish in Ireland.

Electric News in Colonial Algeria:

Arthur Asseraf

01 April 2022

How do the things which connect us also serve to divide us? Electric News in Colonial Algeria traces how news circulated in a particularly divided society: Algeria under French rule in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It tells a different history of globalization, one which puts the experience of everyday people at the centre.

Making Refugees in India

Ria Kapoor

03 February 2022

Offering a global history of India's refugee regime, Making Refugees in India explores how one of the first postcolonial states during the mid-twentieth century wave of decolonisation rewrote global practices surrounding refugees - signified by India's refusal to sign the 1951 UN Refugee Convention.

Sisters and Sisterhood: The Kenney Family, Class, and Suffrage, 1890-1965

Lyndsey Jenkins

19 November 2021

The Kenney family grew up in Saddleworth, outside Oldham, in the last decades of the nineteenth century. In 1905, three of the sisters met Christabel Pankhurst, a turning point which changed the rest of their lives. Annie Kenney became one of the leaders of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), Jessie was an organiser at the heart of the organisation, and Nell campaigned outside the capital.

Confession and Criminal Justice in Late Medieval Italy: Siena, 1260-1330

Lidia Luisa Zanetti Domingues

27 August 2021

In medieval Italy the practice of revenge as criminal justice was still popular amongst members of all social classes, yet crime also was increasingly perceived as a public matter that needed to be dealt with by the government rather than private citizens. Confession and Criminal Justice in Late Medieval Italy sheds light on this contradiction through an in-depth comparison of lay and religious sources produced in Siena between 1260 and 1330 on criminal justice, conflict, and violence.

Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970

Lise Butler

03 September 2020

In post-war Britain, left-wing policy maker and sociologist Michael Young played a major role in shaping British intellectual, political, and cultural life, using his study of the social sciences to inform his political thought. In the mid-twentieth century the social sciences significantly expanded, and played a major role in shaping British intellectual, political and cultural life. Central to this intellectual shift was the left-wing policy maker and sociologist Michael Young.

Classical Learning in Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic, 1690-1750: Beyond the Ancients and the Moderns

Floris Verhaart

11 June 2020

For much of western history, the achievements of classical antiquity were seen as unsurpassable, and works by Latin and Greek authors were viewed as treasure troves of information still useful for contemporary society. By the late seventeenth century, however, the progress of scientific discoveries and the new paradigms of rationalism and empiricism meant the authority of the ancients was called into question.

Educating Palestine: Teaching and Learning History under the Mandate

Yoni Furas

30 April 2020

Educating Palestine, through the story of education and the teaching of history in Mandate Palestine, reframes our understanding of the Palestinian and Zionist national movements. It argues that Palestinian and Hebrew pedagogy could only be truly understood through an analysis of the conscious or unconscious dialogue between them.

Oxford Historical Monographs (OHM)

Recent Publications

2026

Politics, Polemic, and Political Thought During the French Wars of Religion: The Life of Pierre de Belloy, c.1550–1611

A Century of Asia Minor Refugees in Greece: Flight, Fight, and Fraternity

Transnational Women's Liberation: Feminist Activism in the US, UK, and France, 1967–79

2025

The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968–1989

Communism, Cold War, and Revolution: The Indonesian Communist Party in West Java, 1949-1966

Indian Prisoners of War in Japanese Captivity during World War Two

2024

Thomas Hobbes and Political Thought in Ireland c.1660- c.1730: The Leviathan Released

The Spiritual Lives and Manuscript Cultures of Eighteenth-Century English Women: Writing Religious Communities

2023

Text and Textuality in Early Medieval Iberia: The Written and The World, 711-1031

England and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages: Papal Privileges in European Perspective, c. 680-1073

The Muslim Secular: Parity and the Politics of India's Partition

Estate Management around Florence and Lucca 1000-1250

British Philanthropy in the Globalizing World: Entrepreneurs and Evangelicals, 1756-1840

2022

Designs on Democracy: Architecture and the Public in Interwar London

Shadow of a Taxman: Who Funded the Irish Revolution?

Electric News in Colonial Algeria:

Making Refugees in India

2021

Sisters and Sisterhood: The Kenney Family, Class, and Suffrage, 1890-1965

Confession and Criminal Justice in Late Medieval Italy: Siena, 1260-1330

2020

Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970

Classical Learning in Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic, 1690-1750: Beyond the Ancients and the Moderns

Educating Palestine: Teaching and Learning History under the Mandate

The Committee

Chair of OHM Committee