About

My name is Dr Sophie Michell, and I am social and family historian, focusing on the Victorian era.

I have a Masters degree (2019) in local and regional history with the Open University. My dissertation was on infant death in the coroner’s court.

In 2026, I completed my doctoral degree at the the Open University, funded by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge DTP. My thesis is on the coroner’s court in the nineteenth-century, both as part of the justice system and as a community forum.

My main academic interests are crime, the justice system, the coroner’s court, women, infanticide and infant mortality, family economies, gendered violence, and the history of medicine.

I particularly enjoy writing working-class family history, and am experienced in reconstructing history using a rich variety of records. I am also an experienced transcriber.

When I’m not up to the eyeballs in census returns and suspicious death, I live with my cat, husband and three sons in Peterborough, surrounded by books.

You can find me on Bluesky, Facebook, Substack and Instagram and you can contact me from the contact page!