Professor of History and Policy, University of Westminster
After a history degree at Cambridge (1984) I undertook my doctoral thesis on religion and politics in inter-war Britain at Queen Mary, completing in 1989. I then spent a year as a research fellow at the Institute of Contemporary British History, writing an award-winning bibliography of post-war Britain. From 1989 until 1999 I was Director of this Institute. In 1999-2000 I was on a Fulbright as visiting professor of British history at Westminster College, Fulton Missouri. On my return to the UK I taught history and politics at Queen Mary University of London until my appointment as Reader in History at Westminster in October 2012. My interests are wide-ranging. I founded the journal National Identities, and my focus upon the history of the relationship between identities, ideas and political culture is reflected in my research, the PhDs I have supervised and my work with think tanks like the Hansard Society and the Centre for Opposition Studies. I also have an interest in public history, serving as a trustee for two heritage organisations and, since 2011, on the London Historic Environments Forum.
Green nationalism? How the far right could learn to love the environment
Apr 11, 2017 13:52 pm UTC| Nature Economy
Green politics is associated with the left these days, but that doesnt rule out an eco-friendly turn at the opposite end of the spectrum. After all, nationalist worries over finite resources and talk of threats to...
So you think 2016 was a bad year? There were plenty worse
Dec 29, 2016 12:33 pm UTC| Insights & Views Politics
As early as January, when David Bowie departed the scene, some were already looking dubiously at 2016. Bowie was an icon of the 1970s, the era when what is now the dominant section of the population in most Western...
Johannesburg in a time of darkness: Ivan Vladislavić’s new memoir reminds us of the city’s fragility
Labour can afford to be far more ambitious with its economic policies – voters are on board
Sudan: civil war stretches into a second year with no end in sight