Professor Selina Todd
Professor of Modern History
St Hilda's College
selina.todd@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk
I am Professor of Modern History and a specialist in the history of modern Britain, particularly during the 20th and 21st centuries. My research focuses on the history of working-class life and women's lives. I am interested in ordinary people's experience and memory of the past. My research examines class and gender relations, social mobility, work and education - often by using oral histories and unpublished autobiographies.
My first book, Young women, work, and family in England, 1918-1950 (Oxford, 2005) won the Women's History Network annual book prize. My second book, The People: the rise and fall of the working class, 1910-2010 (London, 2014), was a Sunday Times bestseller. My most recent book is Tastes of Honey: the making of Shelagh Delaney and a cultural revolution (London, 2019). I am currently writing a history of social mobility in modern Britain.
I am very interested in how history can inform the present and help us create a more egalitarian future. I work closely with communities and organisations that share this vision. These include MaD Theatre Company in Manchester, the Socialist Educational Association, A Woman's Place UK and policymakers interested in sex and class equality. I write for the Guardian and other publications on equality and education.
I greatly enjoy teaching and among the papers I offer are Approaches to History to First Year history students and a Special Subject entitled Britain from the Bomb to the Beatles, 1945-67, which is studied by Finalists. I am delighted to hear from prospective graduate students interested in researching feminism, sex and class inequality and working-class life.
Research Interests
I research the history of women, feminism and working-class people, mainly in Britain since about 1900. I'm currently writing a book about the first female doctors in Britain, having previously written about young working-class women, a playwright called Shelagh Delaney, and second-wave feminists.
Publications
Snakes and Ladders: The great British social mobility myth
From servants' children who became clerks in Victorian Britain, to managers made redundant by the 2008 financial crash, travelling up or down the social ladder has been a fact of British life for more than a century.
Drawing on hundreds of personal stories, Snakes and Ladders tells the hidden history of how people have really experienced that social mobility in both directions. It shows how a powerful elite on the top rungs have clung to their perch, as well as introducing us to the unsung heroes who created more room at the top. As we face political crisis after crisis, Snakes and Ladders argues that only by creating greater opportunities for everyone to thrive can we ensure the survival of our society.
DPhil Students
I'm interested in supervising doctorates on women's work, lives, writing and activism in Britain since 1900.