John Ayshford

I am a doctoral researcher in the history department of the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at the University of Manchester. My doctoral research, funded by the Elsie Farrar Studentship, seeks to posit John Stuart Mill as a republican theorist and illuminate how his ideas helped to radically transform the republican tradition in the nineteenth century. I am also the co-editor of The Simons of Manchester: How one family shaped a city and a nation (Manchester University Press, September 2024). As a collected volume of essays, The Simons of Manchester rehabilitates the lives of two generations of the influential mancunian family, the Simons, and critically analyses their public work in social reform, business and philanthropy from 1860-1960.