Politics, International Relations & Philosophy

I did my BA in History at Clare College, Cambridge, and my MA in Contemporary British History at Queen Mary College, University of London. I stayed at Queen Mary to do my PhD, on Britain's second application to join the European Community under the Harold Wilson governments. After completing my PhD I worked as a Tutorial Fellow in the International History department at LSE, before coming to Keele in 2004.

My research to date has been on British and French relations with the European Community, the British Labour party and European integration and Britain’s nuclear weapons policies.

I am currently working on the 1982 Falklands war - see 'research and scholarship' for more information.

I teach a first year module, the Changing World: International History since 1945, and a third year module, British State and Society in the Cold War. I also teach on three modules for SPIRE’s MA programmes, Perspectives in Politics and International Relations, The Changing International Agenda, and European Integration: History and Practice.

My main interest is contemporary British history. My work so far has been on British and French policies towards the European Community in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as on British nuclear weapons policy in the early 1970s. I have particular interests in Britain and the European Community, the Labour Party and European integration, British foreign policy and Britain in the Cold War.

I’m now working on a history of the 1982 Falklands war, looking at the experiences of British soldiers, particularly from the Parachute Regiment, and at the experiences of women and families, during and after the war. My book will consider the politics of the conflict, and looks at what the war was like for  individuals involved in or affected by it, and examines commemoration of the war over time. I'm currently in receipt of a British Academy Small Grant to conduct interviews with veterans and with family members of soldiers killed in the conflict.

In the longer term, I will be working on a biography of Shirley Williams.

I am interested also in foreign policy and diplomacy, and am involved in Keele’s growing research area in contemporary Turkish foreign policy.

I am happy to hear from research students in any of the above areas, particularly post-1945 British history.

I am  also a member of the Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice.

• The Changing World: A  History of International Relations since 1945 (first year module)
• British State and Society during the Cold War (third year module)
• The Changing International Agenda since 1945 (MA module)
• European Integration (MA module)
• Perspectives in Politics and International Relations (MA module)

I am currently supervising the following PhD students:

Pinar Akpinar, Turkey's Multiple Mediation Attempts: A 'non-Western' mediator on the periphery?

Ahmet Kalafat, Contemporary Turkish Foreign Policy

Rob Emerton, Tiananmen Square: Archaeology of an Event