Kerry-Louise Apps

My PhD project is a collaboration between the Open University and the National Trust. Focusing on the Stuart-era collection at Ham House, my thesis investigates how extra-European items like Chinese kuan cai lacquer and commodities such as tea influenced the daily lives of the Restoration-era Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale. By combining object analysis with archival research, this project sheds new light on the Ham House collection. It demonstrates how global commodities and furnishings represented status and connection at Charles II's court. As part of this project, I successfully bid for funding to undertake a Visiting Scholarship at the Peabody Essex Museum, renowned for its Asian export art collection. I also interned with the National Trust’s Translating the Language of Empire Project, exploring links between Indigenous American histories and National Trust properties. Before pursuing this PhD, I served as a secondary school head of history and teacher, completing an MPhil in early modern history at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 2022. My MPhil illustrated the captivity of Indigenous American and African labourers in the developing English colonial tobacco industry, c.1617-1642. As a teacher and now PhD student, I have participated in various public history projects. I have been published in BBC History Revealed, contributed to BBC Bitesize, and written textbook chapters on early modern British and global history for Hachette (previously Hodder).