Dr Mike Esbester is Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth and Research Associate at Oxford Brookes University. The research upon which this lecture is based was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the UK as part of an Early Career Fellowship that Mike held between 2010 and 2011, based in the Department of History, Philosophy and Religion at Oxford Brookes University.

Mike’s Fellowship project – ‘Living in Safety: the Culture of “Safety” and Accident Prevention in Everyday in Britain, c.1900-2000’ – looked at how and why safety education came to be found virtually everywhere in twentieth-century Britain. It concentrated on safety at work, in the home and on the streets, and made particular use of unusual sources: including booklets, posters, board games, films, beer mats, bookmarks – even milk bottle tops!

Mike is continuing his research into safety and accident prevention, and is currently working on a monograph to be published by Ashgate, provisionally entitled The Birth of Modern Safety: Preventing Worker Accidents on Britain’s Railways, 1871-1948. He welcomes people contacting him to discuss his research, so feel free to get in touch!