Staff Profiles

I am an economic and social historian interested in all aspects of the credit-based economy of the early modern period. I received my undergraduate degree from Goldsmiths, University of London, and my Masters and PhD from the University of York. I joined Newcastle in 2024 after an Early Career Research Fellowship at the John Rylands Research Institute, University of Manchester. I have previously taught at the Universities of Keele, Sheffield, York, Lincoln, Lancaster, Goldsmiths, and Teesside. 

My office hours in semester one are Wednesday 09:00-10:00 and Friday 09:00-11:00 in Armstrong Building 1.23.

My research explores the ways in which economic and personal failure was described and debated in legal settings. My monograph, Financial Failure in Early Modern England (Boydell and Brewer, 2024) is the first substantial work to analyse how bankruptcy cases were litigated in the early modern court of Chancery. The book uses legal records to increase our knowledge of the complex and multifaceted nature of debt recovery and the various meanings attached to failure throughout early modern England. I am currently conducting research on the moral aspects of debt recovery in pre-modern America, and how historical ideas surrounding debt still resonate with contemporary understandings of right and wrong in modern society.

Module Leader 2024:

HIS2320: The Supernatural: The Cultural History of Occult

HIS1101: Historical Sources and Methods

Contributing Lecturer 2024:

Undergraduate:

HIS1105: What is History For?

HIS2316: Researching History

HIS2318: Revolutions of the Mind: European Thought between late Renaissance and early Enlightenment, 1550–1750

HIS3030: Why History Matters

Postgraduate:

HIS8061: The Practice of History

HIS8104: Ideas and Influences in British History

• Articles

  • Collins A. The Interconnected Nature of Family Indebtedness: The Halliday Family of Frome, Somerset. Enterprise and Society 2023, 25(3), 813-839.
  • Collins A. Narratives of Bankruptcy, Failure, and Decline in the Court of Chancery, 1678-1750. Cultural and Social History 2022, 19(1), 1-17.
  • Collins A. Bankrupt Traders in the Court of Chancery, 1706-1750. Eighteenth-Century Studies 2021, 55(1), 65-82.

• Authored Book

  • Collins A. Financial Failure In Early Modern England. Martlesham, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2024.