Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite

Associate Professor of twentieth-century Britain.
Please note that Florence is currently on maternity leave.

Photo of Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite is a historian of twentieth-century Britain. Her first book examined political and popular ideas about class in England between 1968 and 2000, and she is also co-editor (with Ben Jackson and Aled Davies) of a collection entitled The Neoliberal Age? Britain since the 1970s (published by UCL Press, December 2021). She is currently working on a study of women’s activism and experiences in the miners’ strike of 1984-5 with Dr Natalie Thomlinson (University of Reading). 

This research has led to a special exhibition at the National Coal Mining Museum for England; an online version of the exhibition is also available. 

Major publications

  • Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Emily Robinson, Camilla Schofield & Natalie Thomlinson, ‘Telling Stories about Post-war Britain: Popular Individualism and the ‘Crisis’ of the 1970s’, Twentieth Century British History (2017).
  • Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Class, Politics, and the Decline of Deference in England, 1968-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2018).
  • Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Ben Jackson and Aled Davies, The Neoliberal Age? Britain since the 1970s (UCL Press, 2021).
  • Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite & Natalie Thomlinson, ‘Vernacular Discourses Of Gender Equality In The Post-War British Working Class’, Past & Present (2022).

For a full list of publications, see Florence’s Iris profile.

Teaching

  • British History 1850-1997 (first- and second-year undergraduate survey course)
  • Social change, new social movements and politics in Britain post-1945 (second- and third-year undergraduate thematic module)
  • Queer histories in Britain from the 1880s to the 1980s (third-year undergraduate advanced seminar course)
  • ‘The bedrock of society’? Marriage and family in twentieth-century Britain (session on second-year research seminar course)
  • 20th Century British history: ideologies, identities, cultures, controversies (MA History elective module)

PhD supervision

I would be very happy to discuss potential PhD projects focused on class, gender, sexuality, and politics in Britain since 1945, and projects connected to housing, homelessness, welfare, and charity since the late nineteenth century.

Current PhD students

  • Rhys Jones - National identity and class identity in the South Wales Valleys in the era of deindustrialisation

Recently completed PhDs students

  • Alex Hill, The Politics of The Future in Britain, c. 1940-1979, completed 2024
  • Holly Smith, Up in the Air: High-Rise Housing and the Public in Post-War Britain, completed 2023
  • Finn Gleeson, Heritage, Politics and Identity in East London, 1973-2008: A New History of Imperial Memory, completed 2022

Contact information

Email: f.sutcliffe-braithwaite@ucl.ac.uk

Office: 310, 26 Gordon Square

Student support & feedback hours: By appointment only in Term 3. Book here.

Student support & feedback hours are an opportunity for students to chat with their module tutors about their ideas, any support they might need with the module, and to go through feedback from their assessments. 

External roles

Qualifications

PhD Cambridge, 2013