Dean Blackburn

Contact

• workRoom A2a Lenton Grove
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work+44 (0)115 7484105
• Dean.Blackburn@nottingham.ac.uk

Expertise Summary

My research explores political ideologies and their histories. I am particularly interested in the way that ideologies bestow meaning upon the concepts that we use to understand and describe the world around us.

Teaching Summary

HIST2037 History and Politics

HIST3075 The Rise and Fall of Thatcherism

HIST4058 Past Futures: Reimagining the Twentieth Century.

HIST4019 Exploring English Identities

'Learning from the Past: A Guide for the Curious Researcher' (Online Open Course)

Research Summary

Time and Chance: The Politics of Temporality in Modern Britain, 1945-2008

I am working on a book project about the politics of time. Drawing upon examples from the post-war period, the book will trace changes in the way that policy makers and intellectuals thought about temporal concepts like progress, decline and crisis.

This project is funded by a British Academy Small Grant.

Selected Publications

• BLACKBURN, DEAN, 2021. In The Shadows: Conservative Epistemology and Ideological Value Political Studies Review.
• BLACKBURN, DEAN, 2020. Penguin Books and Political Change: Britain's Meritocratic Moment, 1937-1988 Manchester University Press. (In Press.)
• BLACKBURN, D., 2017. Reassessing Britain's 'Post-war Consensus': The Politics of Reason, 1945-79 British Politics.
• BLACKBURN, D., 2017. Still the Stranger at the Feast? Ideology and the Study of Twentieth-Century British Politics Journal of Political Ideologies. 22(2), 116-130

• View all publications

You can hear me talk about my research supervision here.

I welcome enquiries from prospective doctoral students who are interested in the following:

1. The history of political ideas in Britain
2. Party politics in modern Britain
3. Theoretical approaches to the study of ideologies
4. Class identities in modern Britain

Current Students

William Noble, 'Our poor, tired little island just can't cope': race, immigration and 'decline' in the post-war English Midlands, c.1958-1981'

Alex Riggs, 'Democratic Party Presidential Primary Campaigns and the Left, 1980-1988'.

Rebecca Hickman, 'Gender-nonconformity and the quest for 'recognition' in the United Kingdom, from the 1970s to the present day'.

Luke Thrumble, 'Finding Britain's place in the New World Order: foreign policy in the Thatcher and Major governments at the end of the Cold War'

Evey Boffey, 'Feminism and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Britain'

Past Students

David Civil, 'Meritocratic Discourse in Post-war Britain' (Awarded in 2020)

Matthew Kidd, 'Popular Politics in Urban England, 1867-1918' (Awarded in 2016)

Joseph Himsworth, 'The Political Thought of Keith Joseph' (Awarded in 2022)

Past Research

Past Research

In 2020, I published a monograph that explored the political publishing of Penguin Books. Using the publisher's books as a way of tracing political ideas, it claims that the three decades after the Second World War might be best understood as a 'meritocratic moment' in Britain's political development.

New Books Network Podcast

• BLACKBURN, DEAN, 2024. Review of Are We Rich Yet? The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain. Journal of British Studies.
• BLACKBURN, DEAN, 2023. Harold Macmillan, Margaret Thatcher and British Conservatism’s Politics of Negation French Journal of British Studies. 28(1), 1-15
• BLACKBURN, DEAN, 2022. Review of Davies, Jackson and Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (eds.), The Neoliberal Age? Britain since the 1970s (London: UCL, 2022). Contemporary British History.
• BLACKBURN, DEAN, 2022. ‘The Ideological Tree is Always Green’: Norberto Bobbio and the Future of Ideology Studies Journal of Political Ideologies. 27(3), 347-360
• BLACKBURN, DEAN, 2021. In The Shadows: Conservative Epistemology and Ideological Value Political Studies Review.
• BLACKBURN, D., 2021. Response to 'What Conservatives Value' Political Studies Review.
• BLACKBURN, DEAN, 2020. Penguin Books and Political Change: Britain's Meritocratic Moment, 1937-1988 Manchester University Press. (In Press.)
• 2020. Penguin Books and the Meritocracy Trap Available at: <https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2020/11/12/penguin-books-and-the-meritocracy-trap/>
• BLACKBURN, DEAN, 2018. Review of Willibald Steinmetz / Michael Freeden / Javier Fernández-Sebastián (eds.): Conceptual History in the European Space (2017)
• BLACKBURN, D., 2017. Reassessing Britain's 'Post-war Consensus': The Politics of Reason, 1945-79 British Politics.
• BLACKBURN, D., 2017. Still the Stranger at the Feast? Ideology and the Study of Twentieth-Century British Politics Journal of Political Ideologies. 22(2), 116-130
• BLACKBURN, D., 2017. Review of Geoff Horn . Crossing the Floor: Reg Prentice and the Crisis of British Social Democracy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015.
• BLACKBURN, D., 2017. The Penguin Popular Front The Penguin Collector. 88,
• BLACKBURN, D, 2016. If the Conservatives are now committed to a philosophy of inequality, they are no longer conservatives Available at: <http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/inequality-in-conservative-ideology/>
• BLACKBURN, D., 2015. ‘For We Shall Prejudice Nothing’: Middle Way Conservatism and the Defence of Inequality, 1945–1979 Political Studies. 64(1), 156-172
• BLACKBURN, D., 2013. Penguin Books and the 'marketplace for ideas'. In: BLACK, L., PEMBERTON, H. and THANE, P., eds., Reassessing 1970s Britain Manchester University Press. 224-251
• BLACKBURN, DEAN, 2012. Young, Edward Preston (1913–2003) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press. Available at: <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/89470?docPos=3>
• BLACKBURN, D., 2011. Facing the Future? David Owen and Social Democracy in the 1980s and Beyond Parliamentary Affairs. 64(4), 612-633