Lucy Newton

Professor Lucy Newton is an expert in the field of UK retail bank history, a history of UK corporate governance and and the history manufacture and marketing of pianos, all in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Lucy holds a PhD from the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester, where she subsequently worked, before moving to the Department of History at UEA. She took up a post in the Economics Department at the University of Reading in 1999, where she is now a Professor in Business History and Director of Teaching and Learning at Henley Business School.

Lucy teaches on undergraduate, masters and PhD programmes. She has been nominated for teaching awards by her students. Her areas of teaching expertise are:

• Business ethics
• Corporate responsibility
• History of entrepreneurship and business history

She has supervised doctoral students in financial and business history and welcomes enquiries from PhD candidates in these research domains.

Her published research is focused on:

• British retail banks
• Nineteenth century consumer durables
• Lending to industry
• Corporate identity of banks
• Branch banking
• Advertising in British retail banking
• Nationalisation
• Corporate governance and trust

In terms of methodology, she is currently particularly interested in the use of objects and artefacts in banking history, such as art, portraiture, architecture and uniforms. Her work on corporate governance has examined nineteenth century share ownership and patterns of female investing in the nineteenth century.