Professor Jane Hamlett

My first book Material Relations: Families and Domestic Interiors in England 1850-1910, looked at how the material set up of the Victorian home shaped family relationships and social identities.  The book explored marriage, parenting, masters and servants and the experiences of children as well as home decoration and domestic rituals and routines. Women and domestic life remain one of my core research interests and I have also co-edited special issues on Home and Work and Victorian Women, and most recently the book Gender and Material Culture in Britain from 1660.    

After that I wanted to find out about what happened to ideas of domesticity beyond the home – so I started to investigate the material worlds of residential institutions – where tens of thousands of people lived in the Victorian period.  From 2010-13, I led the ESRC-funded At Home in the Institution Project, examining daily material life in asylums, schools and lodging houses. This was the basis of my second book, At Home in the Institution: Material Life in Asylums, Lodging Houses and Schools in Victorian and Edwardian England.  

More recently I’ve researched the role of animals in British families – and the history of pets in the home. From 2016 to 2019 I led the first major archival survey of the role of pets in British family life, funded by the AHRC.  With Professor Julie-Marie Strange, I wrote the book Pet Revolution: Animals and the Making of Modern British Life which was published in 2023. Our book tells the story of the powerful emotional investment of British people in their pets –and how human-pet relationships have altered over time.  

I have written sixteen articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics including Victorian drawing rooms, clothing in lunatic asylums and Siamese cats. 

I’m currently working on a new project on the history of family papers. The project explores how and why families documented their lives in England in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the intersection of materiality, emotion and identity in family archiving practices. 

Taking history outside the academy has been an important part of my work – in 2008 I co-curated ‘Choosing the Chintz’ with the Museum of the Home in Hoxton. In 2014 I worked with the museum again to curate ‘Homes of the Homeless: Seeking Shelter in Victorian London’, based on my institutions project. The exhibition explored Victorian London from the point of view of the very poor and homeless – bringing to life the spaces and places that they encountered, using material objects to recreate their experiences. Visitors were able to try out a ‘coffin bed’ from a Victorian homeless shelter, and to pick oakum – a task that confronted inmates of workhouses and casual wards.   

Since then I’ve worked with local history organisations and heritage providers – and have collaborated with Surrey History Centre, Hampshire Local Archives, Wandsworth Libraries and Blue Cross. In 2021 I led an AHRC Follow on Funding Project to co-curate Pet Life an immersive exhibition for families at Museum of Home and to create the film Pets: Love, Loss and Healing with Blue Cross and Belle Vue Productions. 

At RHUL I co-direct the Bodies and Material Culture Research Group. I also co-edit the The Journal of Victorian Culture.

My key areas for PHD supervision are: material and visual culture; gender, family and relationships; domesticity and home life; disability and mental health; education; environment and animals.

I have also contributed to BBC History Magazine and History Today and have appeared on a range of TV and radio programmes including Who Do You Think You Are? and Making History. 

More information about my research is available via PURE 

Email - Jane.Hamlett@rhul.ac.uk

Bluesky - @janehamlett.bsky.social

Website - https://pethistories.wordpress.com