Professor Ben Jackson

My research focuses on the role of ideas in political and policy debates in the twentieth century, chiefly in the UK but I have also written about the United States and continental Europe. I have worked on three main projects. First, the political thought of socialism and liberalism in Britain across the twentieth century, especially my first book, Equality and the British Left (2007), which investigated the debates about economic inequality that lay behind the rise of the welfare state. Second, the political and economic ideas of the neo-liberal right from the mid-twentieth century onwards. I am interested in both the transnational networks that generated neo-liberal theory and the emergence of Thatcherism in the UK. With Robert Saunders, I co-edited Making Thatcher’s Britain (2012), which was an early attempt to historicise the Thatcher government. I have also co-edited (with Aled Davies and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite) The Neo-Liberal Age? Britain Since the 1970s (2021), which debates how useful the concept of ‘neo-liberalism’ is for understanding recent British history. Third, I have worked on Scottish history, focusing on the history and politics of Scottish nationalism. This led to my second book, The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland (2020), which traces the evolution of Scottish nationalist ideology from the interwar period to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence.

I teach undergraduate papers in modern British history and the history of political thought. I supervise Masters and DPhil students working on topics in modern British political history, twentieth-century British social and economic policy, and the history of modern political and economic thought. I am happy to hear from prospective research students interested in working in these fields.

I am the Co-Editor of Political Quarterly and I serve on the Editorial Advisory Boards of the Journal of British Studies; Renewal; and Twentieth Century British History. Within the university, I am a convener of the Political Thought Seminar and of the Modern British History Seminar.

Research Interests

• The rise of the neo-liberal right and Thatcherism
• The political thought of British liberalism and socialism
• The history and politics of Scottish nationalism
• The history and politics of the Labour Party
• Twentieth century British social and economic policy

My academia.edu page

Political Quarterly

See page on University College website