Dr Victoria Hoyle
Director of IPUP Senior Lecturer in Public History

Profile

Biography

MA Medieval History and English Literature (St Andrews), MA Medieval Studies (York), PGDip Archival Administration (Aberystwyth), PhD History (York)

Victoria Hoyle is Senior Lecturer in Public History and Director of the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past (IPUP). She is also a historian of 20th- and 21st-century health and social care, specialising in participatory research, the co-production of historical knowledge, and working with communities of lived experience. Victoria originally joined the Department as a postdoctoral Research Associate on AboutFace, a UKRI-funded project on the emotional and cultural history of face transplants, in October 2019.

Previously she was the postdoctoral Research Associate on the AHRC-funded Memory – Identity – Rights in Records – Access (MIRRA) project in the Department of Information Studies at UCL (2017-2019). This project worked with care-experienced adults on issues of memory, identity and record-keeping, to produce advice and guidance for social workers and government agencies.

Originally a medievalist, Victoria subsequently trained as an archivist and worked in archival practice for 11 years prior to her return to academia. She was York’s City Archivist (2013-2017) while completing her PhD, Who Do Archives Think They Are? Archives, Community and Value in the Heritage City (2018).

Victoria’s first book The Remaking of Archival Values was published by Routledge in 2022. She is a former editor of the Archives and Records journal.

Departmental roles

Director of the Institute for the Public Understanding of the Past

Research

Overview

Victoria’s research is on the health and wellbeing of children from the mid-19th to early 21st centuries, with a focus on difficult and contentious histories of trauma, sexual violence and abuse. Her current project explores histories of child sexual abuse survivor activism in England since 1960. She specialises in the use of participatory, qualitative and action methodologies, working directly with individuals and communities affected by her work. She is currently collaborating with colleagues at Kings College London and Birkbeck, University of London on issues surrounding archives of sexual violence, trauma and recovery.

Victoria is also an active public historian, and is interested in the social, cultural and emotional effects of history in society.  She is particularly concerned with the communication and understanding of 'sensitive' pasts, including histories of colonialism, slavery and genocide.

Her PhD research (‘Who Do Archives Think They Are? Archives, Communities and Values in the Heritage City’, York, 2018) examined the relationship between archival heritage, social justice and democratic process, in the context of local and community activism. This is the subject of her book, The Remaking of Archival Values (Routledge, 2022). 

Teaching

Undergraduate

An example of modules taught:

HIS00130I Public History Project (Year 2, Core)
HIS00141I Using and Abusing the Past in Britain, 1835-2018 (Year 2, Option)
HIS00197H Children, Health and Welfare in Britain and Empire, 1830-1990 (Year 3, Option)

Postgraduate

An example of modules taught:

HIS00147M Concepts and Approaches in Public History
HIS00050M Public History Placement
HIS00134M De/colonising Memory: Public Histories of Empire, Colonialism & Postcolonialism