Who we are
History & Policy is a unique collaboration between the University of Cambridge, The Institute of Historical Research, and The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It is managed by its four founding historians:
Virginia Berridge is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for History in Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Virginia is an expert on the history of post-Second World War public health policy and in particular: smoking, illicit drugs and alcohol, the role of the media and the relationship between science and policy. Her most recent book is Marketing health. Smoking and the discourse of public health, 1945-c.2000 (Oxford University Press, 2007).
Virginia and her team have a long pedigree of delivering policy-relevant research. They have an ongoing programme of public engagement funded by the Wellcome Trust and hold regular events that bring together historians, scientists and health policymakers.
Virginia is regularly consulted by policymakers and has been involved in many initiatives on drugs and alcohol policy. The Department of Health recently appointed her to the Alcohol Education Research Council. To contact Virginia, email virginia.berridge@lshtm.ac.uk.
Alastair Reid is a Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Girton College, Cambridge. Alastair co-founded the History & Policy website in 2002. He is now the managing editor of the site and convenor, with Jim Moher, of the H&P Trade Union Forum.
Alastair has an active interest in new media, collaboration between institutions and communicating history to wider audiences. He is an expert on the history of the Labour Party and trades unions and is author of United We Stand. A History of Britain's Trade Unions (Penguin, 2005) and The Tide of Democracy: Shipyard Workers and Social Relations in Britain, 1870-1950 (Manchester University Press, forthcoming 2010). To contact Alastair, email ajr49@cam.ac.uk.
Simon Szreter is a Fellow of St John's College and Reader in History and Public Policy at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge. Simon co-founded the History & Policy website in 2002 and edits new papers.
He is an expert on demographic history with extensive experience of inter-disciplinary work. His most recent book is Health and Wealth: Studies in History and Policy (Rochester University Press 2005). Through his current work on civil registration Simon is involved with several interdisciplinary initiatives as well as policy work with the World Health Organisation. He has recently co-authored a series of papers for The Lancet's Who Counts? series on civil registration. To contact Simon, email srss@cam.ac.uk.
Pat Thane is Professor of Contemporary British History at the Institute of Historical Research, where she manages the day-to-day work of the History & Policy project.
She has extensive experience in both media and policy environments and managed the Equalities in Great Britain, 1946-2006 project [pdf file, 840KB] for the Equalities Review. This report has since been updated and republished as Unequal Britain: Equalities in Britain since 1945 (Continuum 2010, Pat Thane ed.) She regularly speaks and writes on issues relating to the history of the welfare state, gender, old age and pensions.
Her books include: The Foundations of the Welfare State (Longmans, 2nd edition, 1996), Old Age in English History: Past experiences, present issues (OUP 2000), The Long History of Old Age (Thames & Hudson, 2005), Britain's Pensions Crisis: History and Policy (Oxford University Press, 2006), which she co-edited with History & Policy contributors Hugh Pemberton and Noel Whiteside, and Women and Citizenship in Britain and Ireland in the 20th century: What difference did the vote make? (Continuum, 2010, co-ed. with Esther Breitenbach). To contact Pat, email pat.thane@sas.ac.uk.
History & Policy also has an external relations team based at the Centre for Contemporary British History at the Institute of Historical Research:
Ruth Evans (External Relations Officer)
Ruth joined History & Policy in June 2007. She has a BA in History and English from the University of York.
To contact Ruth please email ruth.evans@sas.ac.uk or phone +44 (0)20 7862 8783
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Mel Porter (External Relations Manager).
Mel joined History & Policy in March 2006 to help bridge the gap between historians, policymakers and media. She is responsible for History & Policy's public profile.
Mel has a BA in Modern History from Worcester College, Oxford, and an MA in Journalism from the University of Westminster. Her background is in government communications, where she worked as a news analyst in the Cabinet Office and then as a press officer in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
Mel wrote the chapter on 'Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation' and co-wrote the chapter on 'Gypsies and Travellers' in Equalities in Great Britain, 1946-2006 [pdf file, 840KB], edited by Pat Thane. To contact Mel, email mel.porter@sas.ac.uk or phone +44 (0)20 7862 8768.
History & Policy papers are commissioned by our editorial team who are based in differnet universities around the UK
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John Bew is Lecturer in War Studies at King's College and Deputy Director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Vioence. John's research interests range from the period of the Napoleonic Wars to contemporary history and include civic culture, national identity, political violence and foreign policy.
John's most recent book is Talking to Terrorists: Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country (Hurst and Co. and Colombia University Press, 2009). Previous publications include The Glory of Britons: Civic Unionism in Nineteenth-Century Belfast (Irish Academic Press, 2009). He has essays in forthcoming volumes on Humanitarian Intervention: A History to 1980 (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and The Primacy of Foreign Policy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). He is currently completing a biography of Lord Castlereagh, British War Secretary and Foreign Secretary during the Napoleonic Wars.
For the last four years, John has written for the Irish Times, covering the release of British state papers under the Thirty Year Rule. He has appeared on BBC Radio, Newsnight Review, CNN and Newstalk 101 and contributed to Times Higher Education and Parliamentary Brief. John's research has also been reviewed or cited in the Financial Times, The Sunday Times, Washington Examiner, American Interest, Ha'aretz, Belfast Newsletter, Irish Independent, Irish Times, Irish Examiner, Sunday Business Post and Sunday Tribune.
To contact John, email john.bew@icsr.info.
Andrew Bocking
To contact Andrew, email andrew_bocking@yahoo.co.uk.
Lucy Delap is a Fellow and Director of Studies in History at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Her work centres on the history of feminism, taking a history of ideas approach to the anglo-american exchanges that underpinned feminism of the early twentieth century, in The Feminist Avant-Garde (Cambridge, 2007). She is currently writing a cultural history of twentieth century domestic service in Britain. She worked at the Institute for Public Policy Research in the mid 1990s, and brings an interest in public history and social policy to her historical research.
To contact Lucy, email lmd11@cam.ac.uk .
Ben Griffin, Girton College, Cambridge.
To contact Ben, email bjg22@cam.ac.uk.
Helen McCarthy is a Lecturer in History at Queen Mary, University of London. She was formerly a Research Fellow at St John's College, Cambridge and completed her PhD at the Centre for Contemporary British History. She has previously worked for Demos. Her research interests include political participation and citizenship in modern Britain and the changing role of women in the workplace.
To contact Helen, email h.mccarthy@qmul.ac.uk.
Mark Roodhouse is a Lecturer at the University of York.
Mark works on the political and economic history of twentieth-century Britain with a keen interest in the informal economy. He is currently working on his first book Black Market Morality about black market dealing in Austerity Britain. He wrote Rationing returns: a solution to global warming? and a case study on his media experiences for History & Policy.
To contact Mark, email mr19@york.ac.uk..