Dr Alex May

I’m the Senior Research Editor (twentieth and twenty-first centuries) for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a research project of the History Faculty funded and published by Oxford University Press, where I have worked since 1998.

Research Interests

Mainly I work on new content for the dictionary, and have been primarily responsible for commissioning and editing the 7,000 or so dictionary entries on people who have died since 1991, with help and advice from a network of around 400 specialist advisers. These entries cover the whole range of occupations from air force officers to zoologists, with a similarly diverse range of authors and advisers.

Again, with the help of specialist advisers, I have also overseen the preparation and publication of new ‘strands’ of subjects who died less recently, in areas including imperial, colonial and Commonwealth lives, people of black and Asian descent in the UK, Jewish lives, geographers, linguists, and scholars of foreign cultures.  These entries have highlighted and extended the global reach of the dictionary, which mirrors the place of Britain in an increasingly interconnected world.

Alongside producing new content, updating existing content has become increasingly important as it is now more than twenty years since the publication of the 2004 edition. 

My own research interests have been in twentieth-century British foreign policy and international relations, and in particular the transition from empire to Commonwealth and Britain’s role vis-à-vis an integrating Europe. My most recent publication is a jointly edited book on Chatham House: The First Hundred Years (2026). I also have a side interest in the history of football.