I specialise in the history of people's bodily experiences in the rural and urban realms of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, working at the intersection of environmental history, the history of the body and senses, and the history of science.

I joined the History Department in January 2025, following a PhD at the Universities of Bristol and Exeter, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Before this I took a BA and an MPhil in History at Bristol. From 2022-2025, I was co-founder and director of the Bristol Senses and Sensations research group – and remain on its steering committee – and was on the steering committee for the Centre for Environmental Humanities. I am currently the Deputy Admissions Tutor and Schools Liaison for the History Department.

Research interests

I am particularly interested in questions of how environments acquired meaning in the past, and the role tangible encounters between bodies and matter has played in this process. My doctoral research identified the period 1840–1914 as a critical moment in the construction of what later came to be known as 'the environment' in Devon and Cornwall and argues that it was in moments of close embodied encounter with their surroundings that individuals produced these areas as meaningful spaces for a national audience. My new research project looks to extend this conceptual approach to an urban context, with a particular focus on East London. 

Teaching

My teaching expertise is wide ranging, having taught core skills and methods modules in History and Geography, and undergraduate and MA courses on British, European and global histories, with a specific focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I have also taught specialist modules on environmental and animal history, urban history and sensory history.

Selected publications

Lena Ferriday, ‘A sense of class: Embodiment in Cornwall’s subterranean environments, ca.1850–1910’, Environment and History (2024) https://doi.org/10.3828/whpeh.63861480327332.

Lena Ferriday, ‘‘An indispensable aid’: Urban mobility, networks and the guidebook in Bristol, 1900-1930’, Journal of Historical Geography, 79 (2023), 99-110, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2023.01.003.

Andrew JP Flack, Lena Ferriday and Nick Stromberg, ‘Travels Beneath the Earth: Remembering 100 years of the University of Bristol Speleological Society’, Proceedings of the University of Bristol Speleological Society, 28.2 (2020) 265-275.