My current research looks at all aspects of Northern Ireland's rich LGBT history in the century or so before the gay rights movement. I am currently working on a monograph about Belfast's queer men c. 1890 to 1960, and their experiences of things like cruising Belfast's city centre for sex, forging friendships with other queer men, and how they were either rejected or accepted by their families and communities. I have written a short article about some of this research for Gay Times (Jan, 2019 - if you would like a digital copy, please do get in contact via email), given a public talk on Belfast between the 1890s and 1910s that is available online, and I wrote an article on Belfast during the First World War in Irish Historical Studies (2021). I often tweet about my research on @tomhulme87.

This work I am doing in LGBT history is funded by the AHRC (2022-2025) as part of the project Queer Northern Ireland: Sexuality before Liberation, which I run with Dr Leanne McCormick (Ulster University). Dr Maurice Casey (QUB) and Dr Charlie Lynch (Ulster University) are working on the project too, and we are partnered with the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and the LGBT organisation Cara Friend. We are at an early stage, but for more information you can listen to this BBC Podcast or watch this short video. For media/collaboration please do get in touch!

Before I started researching queer history, I was trained as an urban historian; most of my previous work has been about the culture of modern cities in Britain and the USA. In my first book, After the Shock City: Urban Culture and the Making of Modern Citizenship (Boydell, 2019), I used the former 'shock cities' of Manchester and Chicago to understand both the theory and reality of civic belonging. I covered the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, and ranged broadly across philosophy, festivals, re-enactments, youth culture, and welfare. It has been widely reviewed: Urban History, Journal of British Studies, Journal of Contemporary History, English Historical Review, Journal of American History, Educational Science Review [German], Cultural & Social History, and History: the Journal of the Historical Association. I expanded my interest in how cities are governed by co-editing a volume with Professor Simon Gunn: New Approaches to Governance and Rule in Urban Europe since 1500 (Routledge, 2020).

Part of my work on cities included a focus on historical re-enactment, something which I looked at in depth when I was a postdoc on an AHRC-funded collaborative project about 'historical pageants' (run by Professor Paul Readman at King's College London). With Dr Martha Vandrei (Exeter) I developed my interest in 'the place of the past' in modern British culture into Voyaging through History: The Mayflower and Britain, 1620-2020 (funded by the AHRC, 2018-2021). For more information on the project as a whole - including our activities and publications - you can visit our website.

My student meeting hours are 12-1pm on Wednesday (during term time) - we can meet on Teams or in my office on campus (the best thing to do is drop me an email to arrange).

I am keen to supervise PhD theses on modern/contemporary history (c. 1880s-1970s), especially on urban belonging and community, civic festivals and celebrations, historical re-enactment and pageantry, education and citizenship, local government and governance, and masculinity and homosexuality. I am happy to take topics on Britain, the USA, and Ireland, but also to explore geographically comparative work more broadly.

Current PhD students

Michael Lawrence, 'Quare fellows abroad: homosexuality and the Irish diaspora, 1880-1960' (Primary supervisor, AHRC Northern Bridge 2021-)

Jamie Nugent, '"Making Ulster the tourists Mecca": tourism, identity and modernization in the north of Ireland, 1901-1971' (Primary supervisor, AHRC Northern Bridge 2020-)

Tom Ward, 'Queer citizenship in contemporary Britain, 1967-2005' (Secondary supervisor, Department of Education 2020-)

Former PhD Students

Rhianne Morgan, 'Belfast baths: Exploring and interpreting the historic spaces of the Victorian industrial city' (Secondary supervisor, AHRC Northern Bridge 2017-2022)

I was awarded my PhD in Urban History from the University of Leicester in 2013 (where I was also an undergraduate and postgraduate student, 2005-2009). Before taking up my current post, I was an Early Career Lecturer at the Institute of Historical Research (2015-2016), and a Research Associate at King's College London (2013-2015). 

I'm an 'out and proud' gay man and an active supporter of LGBT+ equality. I sit on the committee of the LGBT+ Staff Network, have written a short piece about teaching queer history in Northern Ireland, and given many public talks on the same theme (and always happy to give more!).