Politics, International Relations & Philosophy

I did my first degree in History at Clare College, Cambridge, and then went on to complete my Masters 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 for two years as a Tutorial Fellow in the International History department at LSE, before coming to Keele in 2004.

My research interests are in post-1945 British foreign policy and politics. My research to date has focused on Britain's relations with the European Community, and I have also worked on French policy towards the enlargement of the Community in the late 1960s. There are currently two main strands to my research. In the medium term I am working on aspects of British state and society during the Cold War, aiming to explore relationships between British external policy and domestic politics and society. To this end, I'm developing projects on Britain's nuclear weapons policy and on civil defence in the 1970s. In the longer term, I am working on a political biography of Shirley Williams, and I have presented papers on the Labour Party and the EEC in the 1970s.

• Britain and the European Community/Union
• Britain in the Cold War
• British foreign policy post-1945
• Labour Party and Europe

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

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