• PhD War Studies, King’s College London 
• MA History of Warfare, King’s College London 
• BA PPE, Merton College, Oxford University

I joined the University of Birmingham in September 2011 after completing my PhD at King’s College London. Before returning to academia in 2005 I spent twenty years working in the private sector, much of the time in Asia.

Undergraduate 

• First Year: Practising History
• Second Year Core: Introduction to Strategy and Operational Art 
• Second Year Option: Britain and the Second World War 
• Second Year Option: Britain and France at War, 1793-1815
• Third Year Core: Writing the History of War 
• Third Year Option: Warfare at Sea from the Armada to D-Day 
• Third Year Special Subject: The British Army on the Western Front 

• Third Year Special Subject: The Weary Titan: Britain, her Empire and the World, 1897-1919

Postgraduate 

• Convenor: MA First World War Studies
• Convenor: MA Second World War Studies
• Convenor: MA Military History by distance learning
• Modules taught: Research Skills; Higher Direction of the War; Experience of the War

I am happy to supervise projects on the military history of the two world wars, on British strategy from Gladstone to Churchill, and on morale and combat motivation. I am particularly keen to encourage projects with a comparative/international dimension.

Current projects I am supervising include:

• Aimee Fox-Godden, 'Inter-Theatre Learning in the British Army during the First World War'
• Andrew Duncan, 'The Training and Ethos of British Officers before the First World War'
• Nick Beeching, 'Worcester and the Worcestershire regiment, 1914-18 

My current research focuses on the British and German armies and the development of modern warfare, 1914-1945, and on the connection between morale and military effectiveness.

I am working on a book for Oxford University Press on the Western Front, 1914-18, as seen through the eyes of one of the most senior German generals, Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria.

In addition, I am working on British military attitudes to the use of extreme violence in the first half of the twentieth century, and on the role of materialism in causing wars.  

• Assistant Secretary, British Commission for Military History 
• Councillor, Army Records Society
• Thoughts on the First World War - Jonathans blog
• Senior academic mentor, British Army staff rides 2014 and 2016
• ‘Sleepwalking to War? Britain in 1914 and 1939’, Hay Festival, 23 May 2014
• Presenter, BBC iWonder guide "What can today’s soldiers learn from WW1?"

Authored Books

• Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and Germany’s War on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2017)

• Winning and Losing on the Western Front: The British Third Army and the Defeat of Germany, 1918 (Cambridge University Press,  2012)  (shortlisted for British Army Military Book of the Year).

Edited Collections

• (co-edited with Professor William Philpott) Mastering the Industrial Battlefield: Military Transformation on the Western Front, 1914-18 (Routledge, 2018) 

 

Articles 

• Military Structures and Ranks, British Library Online
• Training to be a Soldier, British Library Online
• How did WW1 most change life for women? BBC guides
• Why did so many men keep fighting?, Daily Telegraph, 30 May 2014
• The Morale Maze: the German Army in late 1918. Journal of Strategic Studies 37:6-7 (2014), pp. 855-78 
• Logistics during the Hundred Days Campaign, 1918: British Third Army, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research February 2012 
• Combined Arms during the Hundred Days Campaign, August - November 1918, War in History 17:4 November 2010 
• Air/Land Integration in the 100 Days, Air Power Review 12:3, Autumn 2009