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https://webcdn.mmu.ac.uk/profiles/img/profile-images/craig-h-resize-100x100-532711369cf90.jpg
I am a teacher and researcher in history. I have teaching and research experience in eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century history, particularly of Great Britain and Europe.
For my research I’m trying to understand how motoring now is a banality, a chore, a necessity. So I’m interested in society, motoring, cycling and mobility. I’m particularly interested in Edwardian motoring, and the circle of the racing cyclist/racing driver Selwyn Edge (1868–1940).
Why do I teach? To inform, but also to get a reaction. Teaching is a two-way thing, a dialogue.
FHEA
I used to work in computers and IT and came to history later on. I have experience of working in a museum and as an administrator for the History Department’s Manchester Centre for Regional History. I have been a lecturer since 2011.
Why Study History? Three words sum it up: Participation, Employability and Encouragement.
Participation: You get out only as much as you put in.
Employability: Studying History is a wonderful opportunity to understand the world better, but all students will be in the job market sooner or later. I encourage students to think about how to learn and maximise skills that will give them the advantage. And that starts with participation…
Encouragement: I want to help you take pride in your work, your contribution, realise your potential.
Why do I teach? To inform, but also to get a reaction. Teaching is a two-way thing, a dialogue.
Unit leader, The Victorians (Year 2)
Seminar teaching and lecturing for Metropolis (Year 1)
Seminar teaching for Europe in Turmoil (1900-1939) (Year 1)
I have also been a seminar teacher for The Rise of Persecuting Society (Year 1); Edwardian Britain and World War I (Year 3)
Unit leader, History in Context
Seminar teaching and lecturing for Research Methods
I supervise:
David Daniels, policing in Manchester and Salford, 1880–1905 (PhD)
Josh Butt, explaining the rise and fall of the Manchester motor industry, 1896–1939 (PhD)
External examiner for UCLan History BA (2015-)
I am exploring aspects of society and early motoring and cycling in the UK. This includes the context of 'advice' writers (1900-1910) who encouraged a wider motoring experience before World War I. (Motoring, here, in its broadest sense, including cycling, motor-cycling, charabancs etc.)
Current automobility projects include an analysis of the cycling and motoring pioneer S. F. Edge and his place in the wider motoring ‘movement’. This is expected to lead to a monograph on the place of Edge in early twentieth-century society; and also to a biography. I have been awarded £1810 by the Manchester Statistical Society to transcribe the Cheshire motor vehicle registrations to 1914 (to be published in three volumes by the Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society from 2017). I am a committee member of the Society of Automotive Historians of Britain; editor of its journal Aspects of Motoring History; and was chair of the Michael Sedgwick Award panel (2013–15) which identifies and rewards excellence in the research of aspects of British motoring history.
I am working on community-based projects such as:
- Manchester Motoring Memories, an oral history project of first-time motorists in the 1950s and 1960s, and which culminated in a Community Exhibition at the People's History Museum.
- The club and sporting culture of early motorists and cyclists in the Manchester area, especially the Manchester Automobile Club.
My doctoral thesis (2001) was on the middling sorts of eighteenth-century Manchester, 1730-60, and I have transcribed and edited the Diary of Edmund Harrold (fl. 1712-5), wigmaker and bookseller (Ashgate, 2008).
C. Horner (2019). The Cheshire Motor Vehicle Registrations, vol. 1: 1904-07. C. Horner. Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire.
E. Harrold, C. Horner (2008). The Diary of Edmund Harrold, Wigmaker of Manchester 1712-15. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..
C. Horner (2018). Book review: An Artisan Intellectual: James Carter and the Rise of Modern Britain, 1792-1853. By Christopher Ferguson. History. 103(355), pp.347-348.
C. Horner (2016). The Experience of Suburban Modernity: How Private Transport Changed Interwar London. JOURNAL OF TRANSPORT HISTORY. 37(1), pp.103-+.
C. Horner (2008). Representations of British motoring. JOURNAL OF BRITISH STUDIES. 47(3), pp.721-723.
Cheshire Motor Vehicles Registrations 1903-14, Campion Trust, Manchester Statistical Society, 2015, £3650
‘The rise and fall of the Manchester Motor Industry’, AHRC CDA, £58,000, 2015
Cheshire Motor Vehicles Registrations 1903-14, Campion Trust, Manchester Statistical Society, 2012, £1810
‘Conflict and class: the move towards mass motoring, 1900–1914’, British Academy small grants award, 2007, £2910
Book reviews editor, Journal of Transport History
Co-editor, Manchester Region History Review
I am a member of MMU's Sport and Leisure History (SpLeisH) research cluster and am working on community-based projects such as:
Manchester Motoring Memories, an oral history project of first-time motorists in the 1950s and 1960s, and which culminated in a Community Exhibition at the People's History Museum.
The club and sporting culture of early motorists and cyclists in the Manchester area, especially the Manchester Automobile Club.