Emily Cockayne

Cockayne was educated at the University of Cambridge, where she took a first-class degree in History in 1994. She received the Members' History Prize in 1997. She wrote a doctoral thesis at Jesus College, Cambridge, under the supervision of Robert W. Scribner and Keith Wrightson, and was awarded her PhD in 2000. She was a Prize Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and afterwards lectured at the Open University. She is currently a Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia.

In 2007, Cockayne published Hubbub. Filth, Noise & Stench in England 1600-1770. A reviewer in The Independent commented: 'Cockayne draws us into a world where snickleways (narrow, often noisome passages) might be contaminated by fallen axunge (pig fat used to grease axles) or the overflow from a "house of easement"'. The book has been described as 'a treasure-house of material for scholars'. Toni Morrison said Hubbub was 'a really extraordinary book', and that it had influenced her 2008 novel A Mercy. Hubbub is often included in academic bibliographies of seminal works in modern urban history and the history of everyday life.

Cheek by Jowl. A History of Neighbours followed in 2012. A reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement noted that Cockayne's 'approach is to furnish every theme and every chapter with so much evidence that at times it reads like a thesis that the author must defend as she goes along'. A reviewer in Literary Review described Cheek by Jowl in a similar vein as 'authoritative if heavy-going'; while The Telegraph noted that 'Cockayne does not marshal her subject particularly linearly ... [but] crisply accounts for our disappearing notion of neighbourliness'.

In addition to her academic work, Cockayne has written for Architectural Review; The Daily Telegraph; The Times; Times Literary Supplement; and The Wall Street Journal. She has appeared on BBC Radio 4 programmes Thinking Allowed, and Woman's Hour; BBC Radio 3's The Listening Service; and in international broadcasts.

Cockayne is currently working on a history of recycling entitled Rummage, as well as a study of anonymous letter-writing.

• Hubbub. Filth, Noise & Stench in England 1600-1770 (Yale University Press, 2007). ISBN 9780300112146
• Cheek by Jowl. A History of Neighbours (Bodley Head, 2012). ISBN 9781409027737