Professor Samantha Williams

Academic Director, Professor of Social History, University of Cambridge Professional and Continuing Education (PACE)

Biography

I am Professor of Social History and Academic Director for History. I oversee all history courses at PACE. I am also Course Director for the MSt in History and contribute to the Advanced Diploma in Research Theory and Practice and the Advanced Diploma in Research in the Arts/Sciences.

I am a member of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, the Economic History Society, and the Royal Historical Society.

Research topics

My main research interest is the history of poverty and poor relief in England and Wales, 1601-1911. I have written two monographs: Poverty, gender and life-cycle under the English Poor Law, 1760-1834 (Royal Historical Society, Boydell and Brewer, 2011) and Unmarried motherhood in London, 1700-1850: pregnancy, the poor law and provision (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), and co-edited a collection of essays: A. Levene, T. Nutt, and S. K. Williams (eds.), Illegitimacy in Britain 1700-1920 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). I have also researched the history of poor law medical practitioners and nurses, cohabitation, the London Foundling Hospital, infanticide cases at the Old Bailey, and plague in Cambridge, in numerous articles and book chapters. I am currently working on two projects: one on early life assurance in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the other on the history of the workhouse, 1690-1834.

Publications

Journal articles

‘Urban governance and the impact of plague on everyday life in Cambridge, 1625’, Social History, 50:1 (2025), pp. 1-34, 2025
'Plague and poor relief in Cambridge, 1665–1666', Local Population Studies, 105, pp.47-55, 2020
'Paupers behaving badly: punishment in the Victorian workhouse', Journal of British Studies, 59 , pp.764-792, 2020

Other