Here you can read a selection of my past historical articles and essays dating back to when I was an undergraduate student. Everything is free to use as you like, as long as you reference my work appropriately.
Recent Articles
Chapter 3. Byker: An Oral History of Outdoor Play Amongst Modernist Dreams and De-Industrial Ruination
<- Chapter 2 – Chapter 4 -> 3.1 Introduction: A Neighbourhood Re-Placed During the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Byker provided a specific and formative environment for the children who called it home. In contrast to Chopwell – and indeed most North East communities – Byker’s physical landscape saw rapid change in this period. The beginning…
Chapter 2: The Fearful Outdoors: Moral Panics, Media Discourse and Normative Childhood Geographies – The Natural Habitat of Youth?
<- Chapter 1 – Chapter 3 -> 2.1 Introduction The relaunch of the previously ailing Sun newspaper in 1969 as Britain’s first modern-style tabloid marked the beginning of a fundamental shift in the country’s media landscape.1 The format proved popular and by 1978 The Sun had turned around its fortunes to become the country’s best-selling…
Chapter 1: Changing Childhoods and Changing Britain: Expert Discourse and the Universal Child – The Natural Habitat of Youth?
<- Introduction – Chapter 2 -> 1.1 Introduction This chapter looks at how expert discourse both in policymaking and academic circles sought to understand and shape children’s lived experiences of place and play in Britain leading up to and during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, bringing different categories of discourse into dialogue. The framework of…
Introduction – The Natural Habitat of Youth?
Chapter 1 -> 0.1 Whatever Happened to ‘Go Outside and Play’? It has become a common worry that children in Britain do not play outside anymore. News reports highlight statistics such as ‘just 27%’ of United Kingdom (UK) children play regularly outside their homes today, ‘compared to 71% of the baby boomer generation’.1 Columnists fret…
Reconnecting… Considering Digital Environments in Narratives of British Childhood Decline 1977-2010CE
Update Jan 2026: This article is 5 years old as I am publishing it, and since it was written I feel I have come a long way in my understanding of the topic. It is, however, an important precursor to my doctoral thesis, the North East Environments of Childhood Project, and as such I think…
Children of the Anthropocene: The Implications of the “Human Age” for the History of Childhood
Positioning the History of Childhood Within the Anthropocene Debate Across the historical discipline the concept of Anthropocene is being used to redefine how we interpret and describe the relationships between humanity and the rest of the natural world. The notion of a “human history” and a “natural history” existing as two separate streams of academic…
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Dr Louis Lorenzo 