Panel Discussion

17.00 BST, Thursday 13 October 2022

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Speakers at the event

• Professor James Vernon (University of California, Berkeley)
• Professor Muriam Haleh Davis (University of California, Santa Cruz)
• Professor Gary Gerstle FBA (University of Cambridge)
• Professor Quinn Slobodian (Wellesley College, Massachusetts)
• Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (University College London)

About the event

Historical studies of neo-liberalism are much in evidence. The early 2020s have seen new monographs, edited collections and journal articles — offering us a growing range of perspectives on this subject. ‘New Histories of Neo-Liberalism’ brings together five historians who’ve made significant recent interventions, with reference to diverse geographies, political structures, chronologies and methodologies. In doing so, the panel will identify and explore a prominent, resonant and much debated theme in historical research.

Working in the UK and United States, our panellists are specialists in the histories of Britain, America and North Africa, as well as in global histories of ideas, and the international reach of Western economic and foreign policy.

‘Neo-liberalism’ offers a broad framework for our panellists’ study of modern political, economic and social history. But it’s equally a subject contested and debated on key points of chronology, political alignment and origin, and its value as a category of historical analysis to explain change over time.

Chaired by Professor James Vernon, this event is an opportunity to discuss shared interests and research in context: to explore areas of common ground, difference, and dispute; to assess the reshaping of national and regional stories when viewed from alternative global perspectives; and to consider what insights we might draw — now and for the future — from new histories of neo-liberalism.

About the panellists

• James Vernon is Helen Fawcett Distinguished Professor of History at University of California, Berkeley. James is a historian of modern Britain with broad comparative and theoretical interests in the relationship between local, national, imperial and global histories. His most recent books include Distant Strangers. How Britain Became Modern (University of California Press, 2014) and Modern Britain, 1750 to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2017). James’s publications on neo-liberalism include ‘The making of the neoliberal university in Britain’, Critical Historical Studies (2018) and ‘Heathrow and the making of neoliberal Britain’, Past and Present (2021). James is currently working on a new book about the transformation of Britain and its place in the world since the 1940s told through Heathrow Airport.
• Muriam Haleh Davis is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Muriam’s monograph, Markets of Civilization: Racial Capitalism and Islam in Algeria, is published in September 2022 by Duke University Press. Her previous titles include North Africa and the Making of Europe: Governance, Institution and Culture (Bloomsbury, 2018), co-edited with Thomas Serres.
• Gary Gerstle is Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus and Paul Mellon Director of Research in American History at the University of Cambridge. Gary’s recent books include Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present (Princeton University Press, 2015) and A Cultural History of Democracy in the Modern Age, co-edited with Eugenio Biagini (Bloomsbury, 2021). His latest book is The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era (Oxford University Press, 2022).
• Quinn Slobodian is Marion Butler MacLean Professor of the History of Ideas at Wellesley College. His most recent monograph is Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard University Press, 2018), winner of the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize. Quinn’s co-edited collections include (with Dieter Plehwe and Philip Mirowski) Nine Lives of Neoliberalism (Verso Books, 2020) and (also with Dieter Plehwe) Market Civilizations: Neoliberals East and South (Zone Books, 2022).
• Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite is Associate Professor of Modern British History at UCL. Her books include Class, Politics, and the Decline of Deference in England, 1968-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2018) and The Neoliberal Age? Britain since the 1970s (UCL Press, 2021), co-edited with Aled Davies and Ben Jackson. Florence’s recent reviews include articles for the London Review of Books.

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RHS Lecture and Events: Full Programme for 2022 >

The Royal Historical Society offers 4 annual PhD Fellowships for postgraduate historians in their third year of research at a UK university. The Fellowships comprise:

• Two RHS Centenary Fellowships: each Centenary Fellowship runs for 6-months and is worth £8,295 for final-year PhD students to complete their dissertations and to develop their research career.
• Two RHS Marshall Fellowships: each Marshall Fellowship runs for 6-months and is worth £8,295 for final-year PhD students to complete their dissertations and to develop their research career.

Marshall Fellowships are supported by the generosity of Professor Peter Marshall FBA, formerly Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King’s College London and President of the Royal Historical Society from 1996 to 2000.

All Fellowships are open to candidates without regard to nationality or academic affiliation. They are jointly held with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, where Fellows are based.

How to Apply for 2024-25

• Call for the Fellowships for the academic year 2024-25 will open with the Institute of Historical Research in late April 2024.
• Centenary and Marshall Fellowships are open to candidates without regard to nationality or current academic affiliation.
• The Fellowships are awarded to doctoral students who are completing a thesis in history (broadly defined) who have undertaken at least three years’ research on their chosen topic (and not more than four years full-time or six years part-time) at the beginning of the session for which the awards are made.
• These awards cannot be held in conjunction with any other substantial maintenance grant.

For full information on how to apply for the Centenary or Marshall Research Fellowships and to obtain further guidelines, please go to the IHR Doctoral Fellowships pages.

Centenary and Marshall Fellows, 2023-24

Clare V. Church, is an RHS Centenary Fellow held jointly with the Institute of Research, University of London. Clare is a fourth-year PhD researcher at Aberystwyth University, studying within the Department of History and Welsh History under the supervision of Dr Siân Nicholas and Dr Miguel Hernandez. Originally from Canada, Clare completed her Master of Arts at New York University and attained her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Waterloo.

The subject of her doctoral research focuses on the cultural representations of women celebrities, and their subsequent influence on gender roles and national morale throughout the Second World War. Specifically, the project applies the concept of ‘patriotic femininity’ – originally developed by Phil Goodman within the context of British Second World War studies – transnationally, exploring celebrity case studies in the UK, US, and France. Studying the mediated depictions of celebrities like Vera Lynn, the Andrews Sisters, and Joséphine Baker, the project endeavours to understand how the ‘ideal woman’ was framed within these distinct national wartime contexts.

Helena Neimann Erikstrup is an RHS Marshall Fellow, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Helena is a fourth-year DPhil student in History of Art at the University of Oxford. Her thesis ‘The Colours of Martinique: The (re)making of the modern Subject in French-Caribbean Art, 1847-1930’ focuses on visual representations of race and ecology made in Martinique as vital sites in which French national identity was negotiated in the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, a period in which the definition of being, and not being, French was redefined. It looks at understudied visual material of lesser-known or completely unknown, sometimes ‘amateur’, artists alongside work of a canonical artist like Paul Gauguin.

By looking at such artists in a relational, non-hierarchical way, Helena’s research navigates the multitude of chromatic explorations done to grapple and reassert racial and environmental control of Martinique in the decades following the 1848 abolition of slavery. The thesis uses colour (as a pigment, a racial marker and visual effect) as the main prism through which engage with the work and the questions they ask.

John Marshall is an RHS Centenary Fellow, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. John is a fourth year PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin, having previously obtained a BA and MA from Dublin City University.

John’s research analyses transnational lordship and politics in thirteenth-century Britain and Ireland. John’s thesis focuses on the Marshal earls of Pembroke and lords of Leinster, in particular how their influence on the ‘peripheries’ of the Plantagenet empire in Ireland and Wales brought them influence and patronage at the core. His thesis will also provide the first edition of the partition of the Marshal estates in 1247 after the male line of the family died out.

In addition to his membership with the RHS, John is also an associate member of the AHRC-funded Noblesse Oblige research network and has published on aspects of his research in History: The Journal of the Historical Association (108:382) and Irish Historical Studies (2023).

Stefano Nicastro is an RHS Marshall Fellow, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Stefano studied History at the University of Milan and spent a semester abroad in Istanbul at the Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi via the Erasmus programme. Subsequently, he completed an MSc in Middle Eastern Studies with Arabic at the University of Edinburgh and I further studied Arabic in Egypt at the International House Cairo – ILI.

Stefano is currently a History PhD Student at the University of Edinburgh, working on a thesis entitled, ‘Genoa in the Islamicate Mediterranean: Diplomatic and Economic Relationships between the Genoese and the Qalawunid Sultanate of Egypt and Syria, 1279-1382′. Stefano’s research looks at cross-cultural and trans-regional interactions in the Mediterranean during the later Middle Ages. Specifically, it studies the diplomatic and commercial relationships between the commune of Genoa and the Mamluk sultanate with a focus on the practices and the modality of these trans-Mediterranean exchanges.

HEADER IMAGE: University College London: the main buildings seen from Gower Street. Engraving. Wellcome Collection, public domain

New Historical Perspectives (NHP) is the Society’s book series for early career scholars (within ten years of their doctorate), commissioned and edited by the Royal Historical Society, in association with University of London Press and the Institute of Historical Research.

What’s distinctive about New Historical Perspectives?

The NHP series provides extensive support and feedback for authors, many of whom are writing their first monograph having recently completed a History PhD.

Each author in the series receives substantial reports from peer reviewers and series editors; is assigned a contact and ‘mentor’ from the editorial board; and takes part in an Author Workshop to discuss a near complete book with invited specialists. Author Workshops are opportunities to discuss and develop a manuscript with expert readers before submission to the publisher.

Second, all NHP titles are published as free Open Access (OA) editions, eBooks, and in hard and paperback formats by University of London Press. Digital editions of each book increase discoverability and readership. The cost of publishing NHP volumes as Open Access is covered by the series partners, not the author or an author’s academic institution.

New and forthcoming titles in the series

Gender, Emotions and Power, 1750-2020 (November 2023), edited by Hannah Parker and Josh Doble constitutes a timely intervention into contemporary debates on emotions, gender, race and power. This collection considers how emotional expectations are established as gendered, racialised and class-based notions.

The volume explores the ways these expectations have been generated, stratified and maintained by institutions, societies, media and those with access to power.

Designed for Play: Children’s Playgrounds and the Politics of Urban Space, 1840–2010, by Jon Winder (published in July 2024) is the first empirically grounded historical account of the modern playground, drawing on the archival materials of social reformers, park superintendents, equipment manufacturers and architects in Britain and beyond to chart the playground’s journey from marginal obscurity to popular ubiquity.

Children’s playgrounds are commonly understood as the obvious place for children to play: safe, natural and out of the way. But these expectations hide a convoluted and overlooked history of children’s place in public space

Mapping the State. English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act, by Martin Spychal (September 2024), rethinks the 1832 Reform Act by demonstrating how boundary reform and the reconstruction of England’s electoral map by the 1831–32 boundary commission underpinned this turning point in the development of the British political nation.

Drawing from a significant new archival discovery­­—the working papers of the boundary commission—Mapping the State reassesses why and how the 1832 Reform Act passed, and its significance to the expansion of the modern British state (Published online and in print, Summer 2024).

Recent titles in the Series

• Charlotte Berry, The Margins of Late Medieval London, 1430-1540 (February 2022)
• Sarah Fox, Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England (April 2022)
• Leo Shipp, The Poets Laureate of the Long Eighteenth Century, 1668–1813 (September 2022)
• Stephen Mullen, The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy: Scotland and Caribbean Slavery, 1775-1838 (November 2022)
• Matthew Gerth, Anti-Communism in Britain During the Cold War. A Very British Witch Hunt (April 2023)

Edited collections in the Series

In addition to monographs, the series also publishes edited collections. NHP collections are collaborations between historians: edited and including chapters by early career scholars, along with essays from more senior historians.

• Antonia Fitzpatrick and John Sabapathy eds., Individuals, Institutions and Medieval Scholasticism (May 2020)
• Fiona McCall ed., Church and People in Interregnum Britain (August 2021)
• Heidi Egginton and Zoe Thomas eds., Precarious Professionals. Gender, Identity and Social Change in Modern Britain (September 2021)
• Alexandra Hughes-Johnson and Lyndsey Jenkins eds., The Politics of Women’s Suffrage. Local, National and international Perspectives (November 2021)
• Peter Collinge and Louise Falcini eds., Providing for the Poor. The Old Poor Law, 1750–1834 (August 2022)

New Historical Perspectives began publishing in late 2019 and a full listing of titles in the series is available from the University of London Press and via JSTOR Open Access Books.

Submitting a proposal

The Series Editors and Editorial Board welcome proposals for new NHP titles via the NHP book proposal form. Proposals may include full-size monographs and edited collections of up to 100,000 words. The NHP series also publishes shorter monographs (50-60,000 words) where this is an appropriate length for a topic. Completed proposal forms should be submitted to the University of London Press Publisher, Dr Emma Gallon: emma.gallon@sas.ac.uk.

Many NHP authors are publishing their first book, and editorial mentoring and Author Workshops are designed to help with the transition from PhD to monograph. Equally, the Series Editors welcome proposals for second books from authors within 10 years of completing their doctorates.

Enquiries about the series

For general enquiries, please email Dr Emma Gallon, Publisher, at University of London Press: emma.gallon@sas.ac.uk.

If you wish to contact the Series’ co-editors directly, please email Professor Elizabeth Hurren (eh140@leicester.ac.uk) or Dr Sarah Longair (slongair@lincoln.ac.uk).

“Material Turns in British History IV. Erasures: Empire in India, Cancel Cultures and the Country House”

Professor Margot Finn

Friday 27 November 2020

18.00 GMT – Live online via Zoom
 

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Abstract

Historians today are said to be in the throes of a so-called culture war, in which empire and colonialism are key protagonists.  ‘Cancel cultures’ are conspicuous in the armoury of this cultural conflict.

‘Cancel culture refers to the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive,’ the Pop Culture Dictionary explains, and ‘is generally discussed as being performed on social media in the form of group shaming.’

History as both a scholarly discipline and as a broader institutional and social practice has come under repeated fire from all political sides and generational cohorts in this context.  In this lecture, I pick up a few highly visible threads among the rich tapestry of this contemporary conflict. By locating the social and material history of the British country house within the phenomena of colonialism and imperialism, this lecture aims to situate today’s ‘culture wars’ in both a broader and a longer historical context.