Dr Rachel Bynoth | Historian of the Long Eighteenth Century
Dr Rachel Bynoth is a historian and Senior Lecturer whose work explores the emotional worlds of the long eighteenth century. Her research focuses on how people experienced and understood anxiety, relationships, and communication in the past.
By examining letters, texts, and everyday expressions of feeling, she uncovers how individuals navigated connection, uncertainty, and emotional life in a rapidly changing world. Her work highlights the richness and complexity of historical experience, while also drawing thoughtful connections to the present day.
Through her research and teaching, Dr Bynoth brings historical insight into conversation with modern concerns—offering new ways of thinking about communication, emotional wellbeing, and the challenges of human relationships today.
About Me
Dr Rachel Bynoth is a historian of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who specialises in the histories of relationships, family life, politics, gender, and, above all, emotion—exploring how people navigated anxiety, connection, and communication in an age before instant contact.
Rachel completed her PhD at Bath Spa University, funded by the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. Her research focuses on the Canning family, using their extensive correspondence to uncover how people sustained relationships across distance between 1760 and 1830. Her doctoral work, Anxious Expressions, reveals how letter-writing became a vital tool for managing worry, maintaining bonds, and expressing care across the lifecycle—offering a powerful lens on the emotional challenges of living apart. She is currently turning this into a monograph.
Since then, she has published work on topics including female education through letter-writing and co-edited a special issue of Cultural and Social History on distant communication. Her research also features in Talking History: Seminar Culture at the Institute of Historical Research, 1921–2021 (2024), and the edited volume Bath and Beyond, which includes her chapter reassessing Bath’s eighteenth-century marriage mart (2025). Her latest work is a short piece on Mary Anne Canning's motherhood in her 188 page letter-memoir in Women and Transnational Cultural Exchange (2026).
Her forthcoming publications continue to develop these themes. Beyond her monograph, Rachel is co-editing a Special Issue on Teaching the Eighteenth Century, with a journal article on using History of Emotions in teaching, due out either late 2026 or early 2027.
Rachel is also passionate about bringing history beyond the university. She is currently collaborating with the Assembly Rooms in Bath on their visitor experience (opening in 2027), exploring how emotional history can enrich public understanding of the past. She has delivered public lectures, worked with organisations on historical perspectives on anxiety and wellbeing, and contributed to television, including Season 2 of The Queens that Changed the World and Sky History’s Mayhem! The Scandalous Lives of the Georgian Kings. Alongside her academic work, she writes for wider audiences, contributing to platforms such as The Conversation and appearing in podcasts and media to share how the emotional lives of the past still resonate today
Alongside her research, Rachel is active in the historical community. She is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and part of their advocacy and public engagement sub-committee, a ECR Rep for the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and contributes to work with History UK. She regularly attends and organises conferences and events, helping to foster new conversations and connections in the field.
At the heart of Rachel’s work is a simple but important idea: that understanding how people in the past felt, worried, loved, and communicated can help us reflect on our own lives today.
Interested in collaborating or working with Rachel?
Get in touch at: r.bynoth@bathspa.ac.uk
