Research

Brian Short's main interests are in the fields of British historical and rural geography, together with landscape, regional and local history. His recent research has centred on the geographical analysis of eighteenth, nineteenth and early-mid twentieth century rural change; the historical landscape of S.E. England; and the development of the concept of the 'rural idyll'. He directed (with Charles Watkins from Nottingham) a major ESRC-funded project on the National Farm Survey 1941-43 and is interested in the theme of state surveillance and the modernisation of British agriculture 1900-1960. In September 2002 he convened a national conference, held at West Dean, Sussex, on 'Interdisciplinary approaches to the study of British farming in World War Two' (funded by the British Academy, RGS/IBG and British Agricultural History Society), and the edited volume of the papers from this conference was published as The front line of freedom: British farming in World War Two (2007). His own book on this theme is The Battle of the fields: rural community and authority in Britain during the Second World War (Boydell 2014). He was invited by English Heritage to take part in their 'England's landscape' series, and his volume on SE England was published with the others in the series in 2006. His latest books are Turbulent Foresters: a Landscape Biography of Ashdown Forest (Boydell 2022) and the edited Sussex Writers in their Landscape: Self-Fulfilment in the Age of the Machine (History Press 2023) His publications number over 80 in total.