Dr. Lena Ferriday

Biography

Lena Ferriday specializes in the history of people's bodily experiences in rural and urban realms from the nineteenth to twentieth century Britain, working at the intersection of environmental history, the history of the body, and the history of science. She joined the History Department at King's College London in January 2025, having obtained her PhD from the Universities of Bristol and Exeter with funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Lena took her BA and MPhil in History at Bristol. From 2022 to 2025, she co-founded and served as a director of the Bristol Senses and Sensations research group and remains on the steering committee of the Centre for Environmental Humanities. Currently, she is the Deputy Admissions Tutor for Schools Liaison in the History Department. Her research interests focus on the significant questions surrounding how environments acquired meaning in the past, particularly the role that tangible encounters with bodies and matter played in this process. Her doctoral research highlighted the period of 1840-1914 as crucial for the construction of what is known as 'the environment' in Devon and Cornwall, arguing that close embodied encounters with surroundings created meaningful spaces for a national audience. Her upcoming research project aims to extend this conceptual approach to urban contexts, especially East London.

Research Interests

Experience