Aidan Collins

Dr. Collins is an economic and social historian interested in all aspects of the credit-based economy of the early modern period. He received his undergraduate degree from Goldsmiths, University of London, and my Masters and PhD from the University of York. Dr. Collins joined Newcastle University in 2024 after an Early Career Research Fellowship at the John Rylands Research Institute, University of Manchester. He has previously taught at the Universities of Keele, Sheffield, York, Lincoln, Lancaster, Goldsmiths, and Teesside. His research explores the ways in which economic and personal failure was described and debated in legal settings. The 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. Dr. Collins is 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.