Prof Anne-Marie Kilday

Professor Anne-Marie Kilday is Vice Chancellor and Professor of Criminal History at the University of Northampton. She writes and researches on various aspects of criminal history, particularly focusing on violent behaviour and gendered criminality.

Anne-Marie initially studied at the University of St Andrews and then went on to do a PhD at the University of Strathclyde under the supervision of Professor Sir Thomas Devine. Her thesis was on the subject of violent women in Enlightenment Scotland and she turned this project into her first monograph published with Boydell Press in 2007.

Anne-Marie worked at Oxford Brookes University for 22 years before moving to the University of Northampton in the autumn of 2022. She held various leadership positions there, including Head of the History Department, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Pro Vice-Chancellor for Student and Staff Experience.

Anne-Marie has taught on, and led, a wide variety of modules during her academic career, mostly relating to the history of crime and criminality  in Britain, Europe and the United States of America since 1500. She has also supervised various doctoral students to completion and is available for doctoral supervision at the University of Northampton on projects relating to gender, violence and the history of crime and punishment.

Anne-Marie has published extensively on the history of crime since 2007. Her key monograph-length works include: 

• Women and Violent Crime in Enlightenment Scotland (Boydell and Brewer, 2007)
• Histories of Crime: Britain 1600-2000 (with David Nash) (Palgrave, 2010)
• Cultures of Shame: Punishing Moral Lapses in the West 1500-1900 (with David Nash) (Palgrave, 2010)
• A History of Infanticide in Britain (Palgrave), 2013; Law, Crime and Deviance Since 1700: Micro-Studies in the History of Crime (with David Nash) (Bloomsbury, 2017)
• Shame and Modernity: Culpability and Blame in Twentieth century Britain (with David Nash) (Palgrave, 2017)
• Murder and Mayhem: Crime in C20th Britain (with David Nash) (Palgrave: 2018)
• The Violent North? Crime in Scotland 1660-1960 (Routledge, 2019)
• Fair and Unfair Trials in the British Isles, 1800-1940: Microhistories of Justice and Injustice (with David Nash) (Bloomsbury 2020)
• Beyond Deviant Damsels: Re-Evaluating Female Criminality in the Nineteenth Century (with David Nash) (Oxford University Press 2023)

Anne-Marie is currently completing a monograph  entitled The Killing Time: A History of Homicide in Britain 1600 to the Present, as well as two handbooks for Routledge, one on Jack the Ripper studies and one on European Serial Killing.

• Criminal history since 1500
• Violent behaviour
• Gendered criminality
• History of crime and punishment