Key details
Professor Sarah R Palmer
Emeritus Professor of Maritime History
Professor Sarah Palmer joined the University of Greenwich in 1998 as founding director of the former Greenwich Maritime Institute, retiring in 2010. An economic historian, she was previously Head of the Department of History, Queen Mary College, University of London. As Emeritus Professor, she supervises PhD students and assists with university research initiatives.
Sarah serves on the editorial boards of Brill Studies in Maritime History, TheInternational Journal of Maritime History, Mariner’s Mirror and The Northern Mariner/Le Marin Du Nord. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Arts, the British Commission for Maritime History, the Society for Nautical Research and a former Trustee of National Museums Liverpool.
Research/scholarly interests
Commercial shipping, port development, urban history and international maritime policy from the 19th century to the present. She is currently completing Maritime Metropolis: London and Its Port, c.1780-1914 for Cambridge University Press.
Selected publications
2020, ‘History of the Ports’, International Journal of Maritime History, 32, 426-433.
2017, ‘’Coal and the Sea’, in N.A.M. Rodger (ed.), The Sea in History – The Modern World (Boydell and Brewer), 115-125.
2015, ‘Archives and Resources in the Thames Region for Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Environmental History’, London Journal, 40, No.3, 218-224.
2015, Joint editor with Vanessa Taylor, ‘London’s River? The Thames as Contested Environmental Space’, Special Issue, London Journal, 40, No.3.
2012, ‘Government and the British Shipping Industry in the Later 20th Century’ in Gelina Harlaftis, Stig Tenold and Jesus M Valdaliso (eds.), The World’s Key Industry: History and Economics of International Shipping (Palgrave Macmillan).
2011, ‘The maritime world in historical perspective’, International Journal of Maritime History, XXIII (June), 1-12.
2008, ‘British shipping from the late nineteenth century to the present’ in Lewis R. Fischer and Evan Lange (eds.) International Merchant Shipping in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: the Comparative Dimension. Research in Maritime History.
2008, ‘Kent and the sea’ Archaeologia Cantiana, 128, 263-280.
2007, ‘London’ , ‘Navigation Laws’, ‘Safety at Sea’ in John Hattendorf (General Editor), Oxford Dictionary of Maritime History (Oxford University Press).
2006, ‘Afterword’ in Freda Harcourt & Edward Harcourt, with an afterword by Sarah Palmer, Flagships of Imperialism: the P&O Company and the Politics of Empire (Manchester University Press).
2005,‘Leaders and followers: the development of international maritime policy in the nineteenth century’, International Journal of Maritime History , VVII, 299-309.
2004,. ‘Edward Lloyd’ and ‘John Julius Angerstein’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press).
2003, ‘Port economics in an historical context; the nineteenth-century Port of London’, International Journal of Maritime History, XV, 27-67.
2001, ‘Ports 1840-1970’ in M.J.Daunton (ed.)The Urban History of Britain, Vol III (Cambridge University Press).
2000, ‘Women in the war’ in C.J.Wrigley (ed.), The International Impact of the First World War (Routledge).
1999, ‘Current port trends in historical perspective’, Online Journal for Maritime Research, www.jmr.nmm.ac.uk.
1997, (with David M. Williams) ‘British sailors 1777-1870’, Research in Maritime History, 93-118.
1994, (with A.R. Henderson) ‘The Early 19th Century Port of London: Management and Labour in Three Dock Companies, 1800-1825’, Research in Maritime History, 31-50.
1993, ‘Shipbuilding in South East England 1800-1913’, Research in Maritime History, 45-74.
1992, ‘From London to Tilbury: The Port of London since 1945’, in P. Holm and J. Edwards (eds.), North Sea Port and Harbours – Adaptations to Change (Esbjerg).
1990, Shipping, Politics and the Repeal of the Navigation Laws (Manchester University Press).