Dr Edward Smalley

Dr Edward Smalley came to the University of Kent in September 2003 to take an undergraduate history degree. He also completed a PhD at Kent on ‘The Command, Control and Communication Systems of the British Expeditionary Force, September 1939-June 1940’.

Edward is an authority on the British Army in the inter-war period and Second World War. Long-held interests in the France campaign of 1940, especially the famous Dunkirk evacuations, led to his choice of PhD thesis and, eventually, his first publication The British Expeditionary Force 1939-40 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Subsequent publications include articles on military education, discipline and communications. 

Edward has produced publications for the British Journal for Military History, the University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, and War in History. His next major project is the preparation of an edited volume on the military papers of Sir John Dill 1936-41. This project is supported by a three-year Army Records Society Fellowship. Other research projects focus on British imperial policing in the inter-war period and British Army operations in the Second World War. 

Edward teaches British and military history.    

Edward is a member of the Army Records Society. He was an academic consultant to the 2018 Channel 4 series Britain’s Most Historic Towns, has given talks to local schools on history and has hosted multiple  film talks, for example, on Dunkirk and Darkest Hour. He has provided peer review of articles for academic journals.