Dr. Leighton James is from Carmarthenshire and studied at the universities of Cardiff and Glamorgan. After completing his PhD he worked as a lecturer at the University of Swansea before taking up a post-doctoral post at the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York. He returned to Swansea University in September 2008 as a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow.

Current research

Dr. James has previously worked on the social and political history of the South Wales and Ruhr coalfields. His current research is primarily focused on the on the social and cultural history of warfare. He is working on books on the experience of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars in German Central Europe and the Seven Years War.

Principal publications

Books

• The politics of identity and civil society: The miners in the Ruhr and South Wales, 1890–1926. Critical Labour Movement Studies. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008.

Book-chapters and journal articles

• ‘Discourses of labour: The cases of William Abraham and Gerhard Stötzel, 1890–1914’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion 12 (2006):101–120.
• [with Ray Markey] ‘Class and Labour: The British Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party compared’, Labour History 90 (2006):23–42.
• ‘Trade union development in the Ruhr and South Wales, 1890–1914’, in S. Berger, A. Croll, and N. La Porte, eds., Towards a comparative history of coalfield societies. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. 253–266.
• ‘War and industry: A study of the industrial relations of the mining regions of South Wales and the Ruhr during the Great War, 1914–1918’, Labour History Review 68 (2003):195–215.

Forthcoming

• Tales of war: German Central Europe, 1792–1815. Basingstoke: Palgrave [2010]

Recent conference papers and invited lectures

• ‘Tales of war: German Central Europe, 1792–1815’; Eighth Workshop on Early Modern German History, German Historical Institute, London, 30 October 2009.
• ‘A French Feindbild? Austrian soldiers’ and officers’ perceptions of the enemy during the Napoleonic Wars’; Thirty-Third Annual Conference of the German Studies Association, Washington DC, 8–11 October 2009.
• ‘Invasion and occupation: Civilian–military relations in Central Europe during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars’; Civilians and War in Europe, Liverpool, 28–30 June 2009.

Principal awards, grants, and fellowships

• Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, Swansea, 2008–2011
• Deutsches Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), 2002–2003