About Us

Dr Gill Cookson

My enthusiasm for history grew out of a concern for threatened buildings in my native West Yorkshire. Historic buildings and landscapes are still what I love most about my work.

I studied at Leeds University under Maurice Beresford, who introduced me to a world of historical possibilities. After that, I was documentary researcher for RCHME (now incorporated into English Heritage) on their survey of Yorkshire textile mills. Afterwards I did a doctorate at the University of York, on the origins of textile machine-making during the industrial revolution.

From 1999 to 2009 I was county editor of the Victoria County History of Durham, part of England's most prestigious regional history programme. The project I managed produced major histories of Darlington and Sunderland - both academic and popular. The last of these, Sunderland: Building a City, is published in 2010.

I've also written and edited books on the history of engineering, including a biography of the electrical engineer Fleeming Jenkin, and The Cable, a popular account of the first transatlantic telegraph. Other books include a landscape history of Gomersal, an edited reprint of a classic Keighley history, and editing a recent work on the Esk Valley.

Besides numerous articles in academic journals, I have contributed history features to mainstream publications including the Northern Echo and History Today. I also appeared in TV history documentaries and carried out research for Tyne Tees TV’s The Way We Were.

I have delivered countless lectures to local and regional groups and learned societies. I organise well-supported day schools jointly for the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society and Yorkshire Archaeological Society: on Esk Valley history (2007) and Anglo-Saxons in north-east Yorkshire (2009), and coming up in 2011, about the history of fishing on the north-east coast.

I am a research fellow in the history department at Durham University and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. My degrees are from York (a DPhil in economic history) and Leeds (BA in history and postgraduate teaching certificate).

 

Our associates

I work closely with North East Archaeological Research Ltd. (NEAR) and Dragon Films Ltd., who bring expertise in archaeology, film-making, photography, heritage law and planning.