Project Team
Meet The Team
An Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
funded project: A New Methodological Approach to the History of
Divorce, 1857-1923
Dr Jennifer Aston
Dr Jennifer Aston is now an Associate Professor in Law after joining Northumbria University as a Lecturer in History in 2017. Her research interests include the interaction between gender and legal and financial institutions, and she has published widely on gender, entrepreneurship, bankruptcy, and the law in the long nineteenth century. Her latest book Deserted Wives and Economic Divorce in Nineteenth Century England and Wales: For Wives Alone will be published by Hart Publishing in November 2024. Jennifer enjoys sharing her work with academic and public audiences and her research has been featured on television and radio including programmes for BBC and More4.
Dr Diane Ranyard
Dr Diane Ranyard joined Northumbria University’s Department of Law in 2024 as a Senior Research Assistant on the project, having previously been a Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Lincoln. She is a social, cultural, and legal historian, with a focus on everyday life, marriage, divorce, and the family. Her research explores class, gender, sex, sexuality, regionality, emotions (especially love and shame) and cultural representations of divorce. She is currently working on adapting her PhD thesis into a monograph called The Making of Modern Divorce in England and Wales, 1908-1937.
