Steven King is Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester, UK. His work focuses on the understanding and functioning of rural communities. His current projects concentrate on the relationship between industrialisation and the identity of rural communities, land agency and the nature of everyday life in rural communities that dominated Britain until the mid-nineteenth century. His publications include Obligation, Entitlement and Dispute under the English Poor Laws and Migration, Settlement and Belonging in Europe, 1500-1930s.
Dr Geoff Monks is a Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, UK. He has a background in property development and business administration and this has fostered his interest in the historical and current management and control of large country estates. He is at present working on the professionalization of the land agent in the nineteenth century and the ways in which this altered and changed working practices in the context of a widening bureaucratic society.