Sam is a historian of war, memory, and of transatlantic relations. He has published widely in these fields, including a monograph with Cambridge University Press that was shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize – Allies in Memory: World War II and the Politics of Transatlantic Relations, c.1941-2001 (2015). Sam is also a regular contributor to the media. He has provided expert commentary to BBC Breakfast, BBC Radio, CNN, and Sky News, and he has written for The Washington Post, The Independent, War on the Rocks, History and Policy, BBC Online, and The Conversation. A Fulbright Scholar, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Senior Fellow of the HEA, Sam is also a Trustee of Sulgrave Manor and The American Library.
Sam’s research is focused on the intersections of war, memory, commemoration, and transatlantic relations. He is currently working on two book projects: (1) a history of the US military presence in WWI Britain; (2) a history of the US-UK special relationship, from the 1890s to the present. Sam’s research has been funded by, among others, the ESRC, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, the American Philosophical Society, the US Army Military History Institute, the US Naval War College, and the USAF Academy Library. In 2019, Sam was elected a Visiting Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute (Oxford), and in 2022 he was a Research Fellow in Residence at the Fred W. Smith Library for the Study of George Washington, Mount Vernon. Virginia.
Sam teaches US and British history, and historical skills and methods.
Sam has supervised three PhDs to completion. His areas of supervisory expertise are:
- US-UK relations
- Monuments, memorials, and commemoration
- Film, TV, and memory
- Cultural history of war
- S. Edwards, Allies in Memory: World War II and the Politics of Transatlantic Commemoration, c. 1941-2001 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
- S. Edwards, M. Dolski, J. Buckley (eds.), D-Day in History and Memory: The Normandy Landings in International Remembrance and Commemoration (Denton, Texas: University of North Texas Press, 2014).
- S. Edwards and M. Morris (eds.), The Legacy of Thomas Paine in the Transatlantic World (London: Routledge, 2018).
- S. Edwards, M. Dolski, F. Sayer (eds.) Histories on Screen: The Past and Present in Anglo-American Cinema and Television (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).
- S. Edwards, ‘World War II Memory Weaponized: The US, UK and Ukrainian Memory Diplomacy’, Journal of Applied History, 4:1-2 (2022), pp. 46-57.
- S. Edwards, ‘‘A President’s “Pilgrimage of the Heart”: Place, Ancestry, and Woodrow Wilson’s 1918 Visit to Carlisle’ in Thomas Cobb and Olga Akroyd (eds.) Presidents and Place (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023), pp. 103-122.
- S. Edwards, ‘Towards a local history of interwar Anglo-American relations: Commemorating the Pilgrim Fathers on the Humber, c.1918-1925’, Britain and the World, 15:2 (2022), pp. 142-167.
- S. Edwards, ‘A Great Englishman’: George Washington and Anglo-American Memory Diplomacy, c.1890-1925’, in S. Marsh and R. Hendershot (eds.), Culture Matters: Anglo-American relations and the intangibles of ‘specialness’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), pp. 158-188.