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Professor Lucy Newton

Professor in Business History

Pro-Dean Education and Student Success

Professor Lucy Newton

Specialisms

  • Financial History, 
  • History of UK retail banks, 
  • History of corporate governance, 
  • History of consumer durable (pianos)

Location

148, Henley Buiness School, Whiteknights Campus

Professor Lucy Newton is an expert in the field of UK retail bank history, a history of UK corporate governance and and the history manufacture and marketing of pianos, all in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Lucy holds a PhD from the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Leicester, where she subsequently worked, before moving to the Department of History at UEA. She took up a post in the Economics Department at the University of Reading in 1999, where she is now a Professor in Business History and Director of Teaching and Learning at Henley Business School.


Lucy teaches on undergraduate, masters and PhD programmes. She has been nominated for teaching awards by her students. Her areas of teaching expertise are:

  • Business ethics
  • Corporate responsibility
  • History of entrepreneurship and business history

She has supervised doctoral students in financial and business history and welcomes enquiries from PhD candidates in these research domains.

Her published research is focused on:

  • British retail banks
  • Nineteenth century consumer durables
  • Lending to industry
  • Corporate identity of banks
  • Branch banking
  • Advertising in British retail banking
  • Nationalisation
  • Corporate governance and trust

In terms of methodology, she is currently particularly interested in the use of objects and artefacts in banking history, such as art, portraiture, architecture and uniforms. Her work on corporate governance has examined nineteenth century share ownership and patterns of female investing in the nineteenth century.

Reference: Barnes, V. and Newton, L. (2022) The City of financing regions and industrial clusters in the nineteenth century. In: Wilson, J. F., Corker, C. and Lane, J. (eds.) Industrial Clusters: Knowledge, Innovation Systems and Sustainability in the UK. Routledge International Studies in Business History. Routledge, New York, USA. ISBN 9780367465223 doi: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003036357
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Barnes, V. and Newton, L. (2021) British banks and their Aesop's fables: organizational memories of the governance and management of financial crisis. In: Cassis, Y. and Schenk, C. R. (eds.) Remembering and Learning from Financial Crises. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 184-206. ISBN 9780198870906
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Barnes, V. and Newton, L. (2022) Corporate identity, company law and currency: a survey of community images on English bank notes. Management & Organizational History, 17 (1-2). pp. 43-75. ISSN 1744-9367 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2022.2078371
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. and Barnes, V. (2022) Women, uniforms and brand identity in Barclays bank. Business History, 64 (4). pp. 801-830. ISSN 1743-7938 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2020.1791823
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Barnes, V. , Newton, L. and Scott, P. (2022) A “quiet victory”: National Provincial, Gibson Hall, and the switch from comprehensive redevelopment to urban preservation in 1960s London. Enterprise and Society, 23 (1). pp. 33-67. ISSN 1467-2235 doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2020.35
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton - Professor Peter Scott
Reference: Barnes, V. and Newton, L. (2019) Symbolism in bank marketing and architecture: the headquarters of National Provincial Bank of England. Management and Organizational History, 14 (3). pp. 213-244. ISSN 1744-9359 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2019.1683038
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. and Barnes, V. (2018) War memorials in organizational memory: a case study of the Bank of England. Management and Organizational History, 13 (4). pp. 309-333. ISSN 1744-9367 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2018.1534596
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Barnes, V. and Newton, L. (2018) Visualizing organizational identity: the history of a capitalist enterprise. Management & Organizational History, 13 (1). pp. 24-53. ISSN 1744-9367 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2018.1431552
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. (2017) ‘Made in England' : making and selling the piano, 1851-1914. In: Di Martino, P., Popp, A. and Scott, P. (eds.) People, places and business cultures : essays in honour of Francesca Carnevali. Boydell and Brewer, Woodbridge, Suffolk, pp. 127-152. ISBN 9781783272129
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. and Barnes, V. (2018) Formalising credit markets? The entrance of English joint-stock banks. In: Coffman, D.'M., Lorandin, C. and Lorenzini, M. (eds.) Financing in Europe. The evolution, coexistence, and complementarity of credit typologies from the Middle ages to the 19th century. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. and Barnes, V. (2017) Constructing corporate identity before the corporation: fashioning the face of the first English joint stock banking companies through portraiture. Enterprise and Society, 18 (3). pp. 678-720. ISSN 1467-2235 doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/eso.2016.90
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. and Barnes, V. (2018) How far does the apple fall from the tree? The size of English bank branch networks in the nineteenth century. Business History, 60 (4). pp. 447-473. ISSN 1743-7938 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2017.1323883
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. (1996) Regional bank-industry relations during the mid-nineteenth century: links between bankers and manufacturing in Sheffield. Business History, 38 (3). pp. 64-83. ISSN 1743-7938 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00076799600000095
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. (2000) Trust and virtue in banking: the assessment of borrowers by bank managements at the turn of the twentieth century. Financial History Review, 7 (2). pp. 177-199. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S096856500000010X
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. (2016) Virtuous bankers? Banking, reputation and regulation in nineteenth century England and Wales. In: Akrivou, K. and Sison, A. J. G. (eds.) The Challenges of Capitalism for Virtue Ethics and the Common Good. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, Cheltenham. ISBN 9781784717902
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. A. and Barnes, V. (2016) Virtuous banking: the role of the community in monitoring English joint-stock banks and their managements in the nineteenth century. In: Akrivou, K. and Sison, J. G. (eds.) The Challenges of Capitalism for Virtue: Ethics and the Common Good. Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, pp. 62-74. ISBN 9781784717902 doi: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781784717919.00011
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Carnevali, F. and Newton, L. (2013) Pianos for the people: the manufacture, marketing and sale of pianos as consumer durables, 1850-1914. Enterprise and Society, 14 (1). pp. 37-70. ISSN 1467-2235 doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/es/khs042
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Scott, P. and Newton, L. A. (2012) Advertising, promotion, and the rise of a national building society movement in interwar Britain. Business History, 54 (3). pp. 399-423. ISSN 1743-7938 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2011.638489
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Peter Scott - Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. (2003) Capital networks in the Sheffield region, 1850-1885. In: Wilson, J.F. and Popp, A. (eds.) Industrial clusters and regional business networks in England, 1750-1970. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 130-154. ISBN 9780754607618
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. (2003) Government, the banks and indusrty in interwar Britian. In: Gourvish, T. (ed.) Business and politics in Europe, 1900–1970: essays in honour of Alice Teichova. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 145-170. ISBN 9780521823449
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. and Cottrell, P. (2006) Female investors in the first english and Welsh commercial joint-stock banks. Accounting, Business & Financial History, 16 (2). pp. 315-340. ISSN 0958-5206 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/09585200600756316
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Scott, P. and Newton, L. (2007) Jealous monopolists? British banks and responses to the Macmillan gap during the 1930s. Enterprise & Society, 8 (4). pp. 881-919. ISSN 1467-2235 doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/es/khm104
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Peter Scott - Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. , (2007) Change and continuity: the development of joint stock banking in the early nineteenth century. Discussion Papers in Management. 040/2007. Discussion Paper. University of Reading, Reading.
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. , Cottrell, P.L., Maltby, J. and Rutterford, J. (2008) Women and wealth: the nineteenth century in Great Britain. In: Laurence, A., Maltby, J. and Rutterford, J. (eds.) Woman and their money, 1700-1950. Routledge, London, pp. 86-94. ISBN 9780415419765
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. and Cottrell, P.L. (2008) Female investors in the first English and Welsh commercial joint-stock banks. In: Laurence, A., Maltby, J. and Rutterford, J. (eds.) Women and their money, 1700-1950. Routledge, London, pp. 115-132. ISBN 9780415419765
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. (2008) Capital networks in the Sheffield region, 1850-1885. In: Casson, M. and Della Giusta, M. (eds.) The Economics of Networks. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham. ISBN 9781847203656
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Scott, P. and Newton, L. , (2009) Advertising, promotion, and the rise of a national building society movement in interwar Britain. Discussion Paper. Henley Business School pp39. (Unpublished)
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Peter Scott - Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Jones, G. and Newton, L. (2009) The decline and renewal of British multinational banking. In: Coopey, R. and Lyth, P. (eds.) Business in Britain in the twentieth century: decline and renaissance? Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 207-224. ISBN 9780199226009 doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226009.003.0012
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. (2009) British retail banking in the twentieth century: decline and renaissance in industrial lending. In: Coopey, R. and Lyth, P. (eds.) Business in Britain in the twentieth century: decline and renaissance? Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 189-206. ISBN 9780199226009 doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226009.003.0011 <https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199226009.003.0011 >
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton
Reference: Newton, L. A. (2010) The birth of joint-stock banking: a comparison of England and New England in the nineteenth century. Business History Review, 84 (1). pp. 27-52. ISSN 2044-768X
Henley faculty authors:
Professor Lucy Newton

Business Ethics 1

This module aims to develop students’ awareness and understanding of the ethical issues in business and management....

Module code: MM295

Long Run Developments of International Business Theory

This course is intended for doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. This is an advanced course focusing on the Economic Theory of IB. Delivery of this module will take over 2 days....

Module code: MMD008

The Evolution of Entrepreneurship

This module examines theories of entrepreneurship and how it has been practiced from the 19th to the 21st century. It explores the context in which entrepreneurs operate, the strategies that...

Module code: MM336

Past Events

Association of Business Historians Annual Conference

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