Personal information

I am a graduate of the University of Exeter, and spent two years as post-doctoral researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden before joining UCL in 2000. During 2009, while on research leave from UCL, I worked at the Centre for Nordic Studies at Helsinki University ( http://www.helsinki.fi/cens/ ) as part of the NordWel research project ( http://blogs.helsinki.fi/nord-wel/ ).

Research

My research interests are in modern Nordic history, especially transnational and comparative social history.  My current research project is concerned with the consumer co-operative movement in Scandinavia, Britain and the rest of Europe during the first half of the twentieth century.  I am particularly interested in transnational contacts between co-operators - the Scandinavian interest in the 'Rochdale model' for example - and in the role of the international co-operative organisations, including Nordisk Andelsforbund and the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA).

A related project, organised with Silke Neunsinger of the Labour Movement Archives and Library in Stockholm, aims to produce a global history of consumer co-operation in the twentieth century, comparing co-operative movements in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and beyond. A conference is planned for 2012.

Together with Helena Forsås-Scott and Titus Hjelm I am editing an Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Nordic Culture, due for publication in 2011/12. See http://www.ucl.ac.uk/scandinavian-studies/encyclopaedia

Selected publication

Books:

The Nordic Model: Scandinavia since 1945 (London: Reaktion Books, 2008)

Political Change and the Rise of Labour in Comparative Perspective: Britain and Sweden 1890-1920 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2006)

Articles:

2010
“The Nordic consumer co-operative movements in international perspective, 1890-1939” in Risto Alapuro and Henrik Stenius, eds., Nordic Associations in a European perspective (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2010), pp. 215-240.

2009
(with Jenny Andersson), Guest editors of s pecial issue: “Images of Sweden and the Nordic Countries”, Scandinavian Journal of History 34(3) 1 Oct 2009