Westminster is one of the few universities in Britain to specialise in modern and contemporary history, with internationally recognised scholars working in this field. Our expertise ranges from micro-historical analyses of the local to the global impact of internationalisation and international organisations (both legal and criminal!).
Innovative and cross-disciplinary in approach, historical research at Westminster has unique strengths in areas such as the relationship between micro and macro-histories, the interface between biography and history, and the roles policy, identity and memory respectively play in driving historical development.
Our research
Our research ranges widely across both space and time, but is broadly organised into three research clusters:
- Histories of Conflicts (especially the Second World War and the Holocaust, the Cold War and intelligence history, terrorism)
- Identities and Memory (organised into gender and sexuality, political identities and democratisation, national and transnational identities, identities, memory and heritage)
- Urban Histories and Heritage (particular themes include leisure, transport, suburbanisation, conflict, religion and sexuality in the city)
History at Westminster regularly hosts prestigious international conferences, in recent years including ‘A Century of Women MPs’ and the annual meeting of the British Society for Sports History, with French Historical Studies due in 2021.
It is well-connected to a range of external bodies in the museum (such as the Imperial War Museum, London Transport Museum, the Smithsonian Institution), heritage (Historic England, London Historic Environments Forum) and think tank (Hansard Society, Royal United Services Institution) worlds.
Two leading journals – Contemporary European History and National Identities – are edited by members of the history team.
Historians at Westminster are involved with internationally significant research centres located elsewhere in the University, such as the Bass Cultures project (on the history of black music) or the Centre for Law, Society and Popular Culture.
Current or recent externally supported research projects include:
- work on comparative post-war economic and fiscal policies
- garden cities; gender and public health
- imperialism and museums
- intelligence history
- political reform in the Middle East
- post-war British music
- sex trafficking
- sexuality and public space
- sports history
- transnational bureaucrats
- transnational philanthropy
- twentieth-century women’s employment
- urbicide
Many of these, like our PhD supervision, involve a significant cross-disciplinary element.