Krysten Blackstone

School of Arts and Media

Photo of Krysten Blackstone

Contact Details

Current positions

Lecturer in International and Military History

Biography

Dr. Krysten Blackstone completed her undergraduate, MSc and PhD at the University of Edinburgh and has worked at Salford since 2022.  She is a social and military historian of Early America. Her current work examines the morale of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, 1775-1783. Her research is concerned with enlisted soldiers and utilises soldiers' narratives of the conflict, primarily diaries, to illuminate the diversity of soldiers’ lived experiences. She would be happy to supervise dissertations or PhDs on any subjects relating to Early America, the United States, print culture, memory studies, early modern and modern social or military history. 

Areas of research

Social and Military History, United States History, Narratives of Conflict, Memory Studies

Teaching

  • Researching in History (Level 5) 
  • American Conflict in History and Memory (Level 6) 

Research Interests

My research is an interdisciplinary history of the Continental Army that analyses the myriad factors that sustained and inhibited the morale of ordinary soldiers.  As morale is socially and culturally dictated, evaluating morale allows for a bottom-up study, that uncovers what soldiers thought about their experiences.  My research touches upon social, cultural, and gender history through a close reading of soldiers’ print culture, primarily diaries. It seeks to reinvigorate the voices of the of the presumed ‘inarticulate’, which have been underutilised in the historiography. 

Qualifications and Memberships

Qualifications

  • PhD in History, The University of Edinburgh, 2023 - 'The Hardest Conflict: Continental Army Morale during the Revolutionary War, 1775-1783'.
  • MSc in American History, The University of Edinburgh, 2016 
  • MA (Honours) in History, The University of Edinburgh, 2015

Memberships

  • Royal Historical Society, Associate Fellow