Dr Aidan Collins

I am an economic and social historian interested in all aspects of the credit-based economy of the early modern period. I received my undergraduate degree from Goldsmiths, University of London, and my Masters and PhD from the University of York. I joined UNNC in 2025 after an Early Career Research Fellowship at the John Rylands Research Centre at the University of Manchester. I have previously taught at numerous universities in the UK, including Exeter, Newcastle, Keele, Sheffield, Lancaster, Lincoln, Teesside, York, and Goldsmiths.

My research explores the ways in which economic and personal failure was described and debated in legal settings and private correspondence. My monograph, Financial Failure in Early Modern England (Boydell and Brewer, 2024) is the first substantial work to analyse how bankruptcy cases were litigated in the early modern court of Chancery. The book uses legal records to increase our knowledge of the complex and multifaceted nature of debt recovery and the various meanings attached to failure throughout early modern England. I am currently conducting research on the moral aspects of debt recovery in pre-modern America, and how historical ideas surrounding debt still resonate with contemporary understandings of right and wrong in modern society.

Undergraduate Teaching

• INTS1008: Roads to Modernity
• INTS1020: History of Political Thought
• INT2006: China Russia and the United States

Postgraduate Teaching

• INTS4020: A Global History of Empire-the British Empire
• INTS4120: Introduction to World History
• INTS4013: Research Methods