Professor Selina Todd
Professor of Modern History
St Hilda's College
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research examines class and gender relations, social mobility, work and education - often by using oral histories and unpublished autobiographies.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.
