Imperial Heartland

Born into a working-class family in the mid-1960s, David Holland is the child of a white English mother and an Asian Muslim father but was raised primarily by his maternal grandparents. After finishing formal education without much in the way of qualifications, David studied for a diploma at a local college and, at the age of 46, attended the University of Sheffield to read History. He won a Wolfson Foundation scholarship for his doctorate, receiving his PhD in 2019 from the University of Sheffield. He is currently an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield, and a member of the Royal Historical Society. His publications include articles in Past and Present and Twentieth Century British History.

• Introduction; 1. Sheffield: The Steel City; 2. The migration networks of South Asian immigrants in the Sheffield area; 3. Working lives; 4. Marriage, belonging and tolerance in 'the era of moral condemnation'; 5. Empire, racism and everyday tolerance; Conclusion.

'Holland has impressively conducted deep and valuable research, bringing up a whole host of material that reveals the underexplored networks of South Asian migrants in Sheffield and crucially attempted to integrate that history into a broader history of working-class Sheffield and the broader kinship and social networks and interactions of a diverse, multicultural working-class population.' Sumita Mukherjee, American Historical Review