Department of History

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Dean Blackburn

Lecturer in Modern British History, Faculty of Arts

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Expertise Summary

Research

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

Undergraduate Teaching

I convene HIST2037, a module for students enrolled on the History and Politics joint honours programme. This module, which is designed to help students navigate the boundary between their two disciplines, explores different concepts and approaches that scholars employ to understand political change.

I also convene The Rise and Fall of Thatcherism, a special subject explores the political, social and cultural changes that took place in 1980s Britain.

As well as the above, I also teach on the following team-taught undergraduate modules:

  • Learning History
  • Contemporary World
  • Road To Modernity, 1789 - 1945

Postgraduate Teaching

I convene Past Futures: Reimagining the Twentieth Century. Taking the concept of modernity as its starting-point, this course interrogates the social and political changes that re-shaped Britain in the twentieth-century.

I contribute to Exploring English Identities.

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.

Selected Publications

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.

Department of History

University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

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