History

Lecturer in History
Tutor for the MA in History
Office hour: Wednesdays 9-10 am
E-mail: michael.collins@ucl.ac.uk

Profile:

I joined the department as a permanent lecturer in 2007 after studying at the LSE, Cambridge and Oxford. I was awarded a D.Phil. in Modern History by the University of Oxford in 2009. At UCL I teach aspects of Modern British and World History over roughly the last 200 years. My first book was on Rabindranath Tagore and the intellectual history of the British-Indian imperial relationship.

My second book project is on Sir Andrew Cohen and the political economy of decolonisation in Africa, covering his involvement in the creation of the Central African Federation, his time as Governor of Uganda, his work at the UN Trusteeship Council and finally his role as the first Permanent Secretary of the newly created Ministry for Overseas Development in 1964. 

I am also developing a longer-term project on the history of decolonisation and its metropolitan impacts post-1945, which evolves out of my special subject on Britain's experience of decolonisation. I am interested in the political and economic consequences of decolonisation in the metropole and the constraints it placed on political thought and practical politics, especially in the case of the Labour Party. But the project ranges more widely, looking at non-state institutions and associations, broadening the definition of the political to include the anti-apartheid movement, labour relations, community struggles for citizenship, Commonwealth relations, the BBC, outward migration, the 'British world' after empire and the idea of Englishness. The project thus connects the loss of empire 'overseas' to changes in economy, society, politics and culture at 'home', whilst also seeking to complicate that binary opposition.

Please see my webpage on www.academia.edu for full details of my research activities and publications.

Undergraduate teaching:

HIST1002: Concepts, Categories and the Practice of History
HIST6306: Britain and the Wider World: Empire, War and Decolonisation
HIST7341: The Making of a Multicultural City: London in the Twentieth Century
HIST9317: Decolonisation: Britain's Lost Empire, 1945-1997 (Final Year Special Subject)

Graduate teaching:

HISTGM02: Debates and Methods in History
HISTG070: The Labour Party in the Era of Decolonisation

PhD supervision:

I am the primary supervisor of the following PhD projects:

Hana Qugana: John Hargrave and radical political thought in interwar Britain
Jack Saunders: Workplace militancy and political ideas in Britain, 1964-1985
Jack Taylor: Anglo-American relations, oil and the Middle East, 1942-1952

I also act as second supervisor to the following students:

Charlotte Riley: British imperialism, decolonisation and development in Africa
Laura Ishiguro: Family and letter writing within the British Empire
Hilary Ingram: Gender and British medical missions in India
Ben Mechen: Sex and Culture in Seventies Britain

I welcome applications from students wishing to study for a PhD in twentieth century British history, especially from those interested in the history of ideas, imperialism, decolonisation and the history of political economy.