Member Bio
Vanessa Taylor is a historian of modern Britain interested in the political and environmental histories of water and energy. Much of her work has focused on the politics of water use and debates around urban rivers (especially the River Thames). More recently she has been researching transitions in energy consumption and everyday life as part of the project team for "Material Cultures of Energy: Transitions, Disruption, and Everyday Life in the Twentieth Century," funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Vanessa completed her PhD (on Victorian temperance and the free drinking water movement) in 2006 at Birkbeck College, University of London. She is now a lecturer in history at the University of Greenwich, London.