Dr Rebecca Wright

Associate Professor

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

I am an Associate Professor in History, and currently the Principal Investigator of the Wellcome Trust funded Project “Carbon Bodies: Warmth and Fuelling Health in Britain, 1918 to 2022”.

I joined Northumbria in 2018, having been a Research Fellow in Future Health at the University of York in the Centre for Global Health Histories. Prior to this I was a Research Fellow in Mass Observation Studies at the University of Sussex (2017) and a Research Fellow on the AHRC collaborative project ‘Material Cultures of Energy,’ Birkbeck College (2014-16). I was awarded my PhD from Birkbeck college in 2015.

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Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

My research has centred on cultural approaches to energy in twentieth century America and more recently Britain. My first book Moral Energy in America: From the Progressive Era to the Atomic Bomb (Johns Hopkins: 2025) explores the birth of an ‘energy consciousness’ in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. In addition to focusing on the role of conceptual frameworks in defining energy, I have also looked to the history of emotions, and more recently the medical humanities to better understand our relationship to energy in the past. I have published widely in this area in journals including, Environmental History, the Journal for Canadian History, the History Workshop Journal, and Environment, Space, Place.

I also co-authored (with Hiroki Shin and Frank Trentmann), Power, Energy and International Cooperation: A History of the World Energy Council. (Munich: Oekom Verlag, 2019) which examined the role of experts, expertise and international organisations in shaping international policy relating to energy.

My current research is examining histories of heat and fuel poverty. In 2024 I was awarded a Wellcome Trust CDA for the project “Carbon Bodies; Warmth and Fuelling Health in Britain, 1918 to 2022.” Focussing on the most carbon intensive area of everyday health, heating, “Carbon Bodies” examines how health became increasingly carbon intensive over the twentieth century. This process was never even and the project will uncover a history of fuel poverty, and the role that experts, community groups, and activists had in redefining heat as a matter for social policy. In doing so, the project seeks to provide a historical context to better understand the challenges of decarbonising the body at a time of environmental crisis and energy insecurity.

Alongside research in energy, I am also interested in the application and impacts of digital methods within humanities and historical research.

At Northumbria, I teach environmental history across the American Studies and History curriculum. I also lead the Level 5 experiential learning module HI5054 “Fieldnotes: Politics and Policy Making in Place” centred around teaching environmental history in the field.

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
'Ebbs and Floods': William James's Energy Ethics, Wright, R. 1 Mar 2025, Energy's History: Toward a Global Canon, Stanford, Stanford University Press
Moral Energy in America: From the Progressive Era to the Atomic Bomb, Wright, R. 29 Apr 2025
68 Degrees: New york city’s residential heat and hot water code as an invisible energy policy, Wright, R. 1 Oct 2023, In: Environmental History
Transforming innovation for decarbonisation? Insights from combining complex systems and social practice perspectives, Labanca, N., Pereira, Â., Watson, M., Krieger, K., Padovan, D., Watts, L., Moezzi, M., Wallenborn, G., Wright, R., Laes, E., Fath, B., Ruzzenenti, F., De Moor, T., Bauwens, T., Mehta, L. 1 Jul 2020, In: Energy Research and Social Science
Power, Energy and International Cooperation: A History of the World Energy Council, Wright, R., Shin, H., Trentmann, F. 1 Aug 2019
Typewriting Mass Observation Online: Media Imprints on the Digital Archive, Wright, R. 1 Apr 2019, In: History Workshop Journal
Mass Observation and the Emotional Energy Consumer, Wright, R. 2018, In: Canadian Journal of History
The Economics of Aesthetics at Southern California Edison, Wright, R. 1 Aug 2018, In: Environment, Space, Place
The Social Life of Energy Futures: Experts, Consumers, and Demand in the Golden Age of Modernisation, Wright, R., Trentmann, F. 4 Oct 2018, Work in Progress, Munich, Oekom Verlag
Connecting Past, Present and Future, Wright, R., Pooley, C. Apr 2017, In: Interactions