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Dr Simon Layton

Simon

Senior Lecturer in Global History

Email: s.h.layton@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7882 2898
Room Number: ArtsTwo 2.10
Office Hours: Sabbatical Semester B, 2024-5

Profile

Originally from Aotearoa New Zealand, I completed my doctorate under the supervision of C. A. Bayly at the University of Cambridge, where I then lectured in World History for two years before joining the School of History at QMUL. I have also taught at Lingnan University in Hong Kong and at the University of Otago. My work explores the epistemological collision of local and indigenous concepts of maritime sovereignty and environmental custodianship with European imperial expansion in Asia and the Pacific.

 



Teaching

My core undergraduate teaching introduces students to the major themes and methodologies of global history, through the Level 4 module HST4431 – Global Encounters: Conquest and Culture in World History and at Level 5, HST5230 – Piracy and Civilisation: Antiquity to the Golden Age. I also contribute topics on oceanic, colonial, and environmental history for our postgraduate Masters programme.

 

 

Research

Research Interests:

My research interests fall within the fields of imperial history, world history, environmental history and the ‘oceanic turn’, with regional focuses on littoral, riparian, and archipelagic spaces across the Indian Ocean and Pacific worlds. My forthcoming monograph will be published with CUP in April 2026, and is entitled Piratical States: British Imperialism in the Indian Ocean World. It considers local and indigenous resistance to Britain’s naval and mercantile expansion from the eighteenth century, westwards from the Indian subcontinent into the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, and eastwards into the Straits of Melaka, Riau Archipelago, northwest Borneo, and the South China Sea. I am currently researching the changing role the Royal Indian Navy in the early twentieth century, while also developing a wider project on the extraction and use of coastal and marine resources in the early modern Indian Ocean world.



Publications

Monograph: 

  • Piratical States: British Imperialism in the Indian Ocean world (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press). 

  

Book Chapters: 

  • 'Primitive Liberals and Pirate Tribes: Black-Flag Radicalism and the Kibbo Kift', Liberal Ideals and the Politics of Decolonisation, ed. Harshan Kumarasingham (Routledge, 2020). Co-authored. 

 

Articles:

 

Supervision

I welcome applications from candidates wishing to undertake doctoral research in any area of imperial, maritime, or environmental history between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly with focus on the Indian Ocean and Pacific worlds (broadly defined). 

 

Current PhD students: 

  • Max Easterbrooke, ‘Merchant Intellectualism in the British Imperial Tea Trade during the 19th Century’  

Past PhD students:

  • Timothy Riding, ‘Producing space in the English East India Company’s Western Presidency, 1612-1780’ (QMUL, 2018)
  • Steven Johnstone, ‘The Role of the Maritime Frontier in the Formation of White Australia, 1850-1914’ (QMUL, 2024)

Examined:

  • Anshul Avijit, ‘Visual Culture of the Santals and their Image: Myth, Morals and Materiality’ (University of Cambridge, 2018) 
  • Rebecca Simon, ‘The Crime of Piracy and its Punishment: The Performance of Maritime Supremacy and its Representations in the British Atlantic World, 1670-1830’ (King’s College London, 2017) 

 

 

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