Jack Newman

Dr Jack Newman is an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Kent, and an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. He is currently leading The Making of Maidstone project, a Victoria County History initiative that is producing a scholarly volume on the history of Maidstone from 1549-1660 while building a sustainable community of interest around the town’s past through collaborative research. Previously, Jack was a Leverhulme Funded Post-doctoral Researcher at the Centre for Digital Humanities and Literary Criticism, University of Antwerp, where he developed a Handwriting Text Recognition model for fourteenth-century English legal records. Jack is exploring increasing engagement with the study of the past through imaginative collaborations with researchers in the visual arts. He was International Project Co-Lead for ‘Stories of Spoil’, which collected personal accounts from Channel Tunnel workers and local residents. Additionally, Jack was the Royal Historical Society’s Centenary Fellow (2019-20) at the Institute of Historical Research and an AHRC funded Doctoral Candidate at the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent. After ten years as a painter and decorator, Jack began his studies at the Open University before completing a BA in History at Kent. He subsequently completed an MA and PhD at MEMS. His doctoral thesis explored the role of perceptions of corruption on the development of English crown institutions, including in-depth examinations of the political poetry of the Harley Scribe.