Research Spotlight: Dr Michael Collins

What is your role and what does it involve?

I'm an associate professor of modern and contemporary British history in the Department of History, here at UCL. As with most academic roles, my job involves a range of different things over time: teaching, of course, at undergraduate, MA, and PhD levels; doing my own research and writing about British history; and also planning and administering different aspects of university life such as admissions, examinations, student welfare, how we widen access to universities, and so on.

What do you find most interesting or enjoyable about your work?

Working with fantastic students and colleagues is certainly one of the most enjoyable aspects of the job. From first year undergrads through to seasoned professors, UCL is a dynamic and diverse scholarly community. That means we challenge and question each other’s assumptions, pushing ourselves to think harder about arguments, evidence, and impact. UCL’s ‘grand challenges’ approach to inter-disciplinary research helps to harness the power of research in helping to solve real-world problems. Perhaps because my study of history relates to the recent past, I’m lucky to be involved in some externally related projects linked to public policy outcomes. Thinking about how historical research connects to current social and political questions is, to me, a really interesting element of my work.

Tell us about your research

My research is underpinned by a relatively simple question: how did the experience of being an imperial power change Britain over time, from the late nineteenth-century to the present? This means I write about the wider British Empire in its varied global contexts and have published work on world history and decolonisation, particularly from the 1940s onwards. I have also published on the British imperial experience in both India and sub-Saharan Africa, but ultimately my focus is on Britain itself. Many historian colleagues are experts in the colonial and post-colonial histories of specific countries and regions. They are better qualified than I am to write meaningfully about those places.

I feel I am best placed to add value in thinking about what we sometimes call the metropole, that is the centre of the empire, Britain.  In doing so, I pay attention to the way in which the possession of an empire contributed to the complex construction of a British national identity, and the crucial question of how the dismantling of that empire reconfigured 'Britishness'. This has led me to research and write about topics as varied as imperial literature and literary culture, the history of cricket, World War II propaganda, Caribbean migration and settlement in Britain, and India landing a rocket on the moon.

What led you to pursue a research career in this field?

That question is hard to answer. I think much of it comes down to people and chance. Academia was a very alien world to me when growing up. I hold degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, and the LSE – and teach at UCL – but my father left school at the age of 12 with no educational qualifications at all. I was very lucky to have one or two inspirational schoolteachers who really turned me on to politics and history. For a while I thought I wanted to be a journalist, but after trying my best to break into that field I was turned down for a graduate training programme. I realise now that I thought (wrongly) I was too smart, and I wasn’t willing to listen carefully to those who might have trained me in the craft of journalism.

So, I kept studying history, especially the history of ideas. I fell in love with someone who had family roots in Calcutta (now Kolkata), travelled to India, and started thinking about the empire and the way it shaped culture and political thought. I now have three children who are of mixed English and Indian cultural heritage, and that inevitably shapes my thinking too, even the kinds of research questions I ask. At one stage I was ready to quit studying, but a dear friend persuaded me to try and follow him to Cambridge. People and friendships are the most important things in life, so I have often let them dictate my next move. There was no grand plan. Much of it was serendipity. There may have been some elements of merit and hard work but there was also a lot of luck, and without the love and support of friends and family, things could have been very different.

One thing I’ve become acutely aware of is that, despite the obvious importance and validity of intersectionality, class is a much more meliorable identity category than ethnicity, religion, and gender. If you’re white, male, Christian - and you are willing to polish up your accent and speedily learn how to navigate the cutlery at high table - you can easily pass for middle or upper-middle class in the UK. Yes, individuals count, but when it comes to the exercise of power, structures matter more.

So, building an academic research career after coming from a very ‘non-traditional’ background has not made me an evangelist for meritocracy, far from it. That said, one thing that stays with me is my early Catholic schooling, where my teachers used to say: “whatever you do, work hard, be the best you can be, try to make a difference.” Although I am an atheist, I still keep trying to follow their advice, on that point at least.

What working achievement or initiative are you most proud of?

Between 2021 and 2023 I worked with some formidable people from outside of academia on The Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC). We produced a significant report in June 2023 that examined the way in which class, ethnicity, and gender shape access to and progression in cricket.

Sport is a tremendously important, and often overlooked, space within which people express identity and power is exercised. Cricket is deeply implicated in the past and present of Englishness as a cultural and national identity, built on a hegemonic, white, and middle-to-upper-middle class masculinity that was consolidated at the high age of imperial expansion in the late nineteenth century, then handed down across generations. The history of sport is an area of scholarship that deserves more attention, and I was very grateful to the chair of the commission for allowing me to author a 10,000-word history chapter, something which is relatively unusual for a report of this kind.

The report is already having an impact. In late August 2023, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) announced that it would move immediately towards pay equity for the England women’s cricket team, and cited our research, findings, and recommendations as a key driver of this change.

We are also working to develop a state school action plan, to improve access for the vast majority of our population who go to school in non-fee paying contexts, most of whom have no opportunity to play what is still supposed to be our national summer sport.

The report also contains findings and recommendations that build upon my research into the history of black cricket in post-war England. I’m hopeful that the ECB will be minded not simply to acknowledge the historical injustices suffered by the black Caribbean community, but to substantially fund a rebuilding project.

A small contribution to the resurrection of Caribbean cricket in England will be made by a UCL Knowledge Exchange grant that I recently secured. Working in collaboration with a brilliant younger UCL colleague, Montaz Marché, as well as others at The Bartlett and UCL East, we will develop an interactive, online ‘memory map’ that charts the past and present of black cricket clubs in the UK. Importantly, this will be done in partnership with community stakeholders, offering oral history training and creating an online portal that will enable black cricket clubs to build and maintain their own community archives.

What's next on the research horizon for you?

My next book is After the Raj: Britain and India Since 1947. The argument is that since 1947, Britain’s relationship with India has been shaped by various stages of nostalgia for the Raj, mourning for a lost sense of purpose, and often by denial of the dramatic shift in the power balance between India and its erstwhile ‘colonial master.’ These developments map across a whole range of relationships and areas of engagement from political, military, and economic, through to culture, migration, literature, film, and sport.

From right to left on the political spectrum, debates about Britain’s relationship with India have been highly significant in terms of Britain’s sense of collective selfhood, its self-understanding of Britishness. Three generations of British elites have struggled to make sense of the experience of being an imperial power in India.

Today, alongside the extraordinary interconnections between the two countries – partly based on the migration and settlement of Indians in Britain – and whilst India emerges as one of the world’s leading powers in the twenty-first century, Britain urgently needs to better understand its historical relationship with India. Ultimately, a clearer comprehension of the longer-term effects of losing its empire will help Britain build a different, better, future partnership with India.

On that note, whilst writing this book, I’m delighted to be acting as the lead organiser for the UCL India Summer School programme. The summer school is a not-for-profit entity that will offer an experience of UCL’s – and hence the wider UK’s – approach to higher education. It will be taught to pre-university students in India, by visiting professors from our London campus. The inaugural summer school takes place in June 2024.

Can you share some interesting work that you read about recently?

Right now, I’m reading Sam Moyn’s new book, Liberalism against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times. Moyn is what might be called a grudging liberal and his intention often seems to be to take an axe to cherished liberal shibboleths, for example about the universality or naturalness of human rights. Moyn argues that such ideas are historically produced and hence contingent.

Although I might disagree with some of the finer details, I find this approach inspiring in terms of thinking about how history can help Britain to be reframed and reoriented as a post-imperial, but still liberal society, with renewed purpose, at home and in the world.

It’s worth adding that Moyn’s goal is not simply to be satisfied with pricking the bubble of liberal pomposity, or to point out that liberals past and present are hypocrites, which they undoubtedly are. He is determined to push liberals to be cognisant of the fragility of their ideals and values, and therefore of the need to continually interrogate, strengthen, and reinvent them for changed times.

In my view, authoritarianism and populism on the right are obvious dangers, but the complacency of liberals themselves, as well as cavalier attacks on liberalism from the left, are more insidious. This makes the critical re-examination of liberal thought and practice an urgent problem for historians.

What would it surprise people to know about you?

I ran the London marathon in 3 hours and 13 minutes. Despite getting old, I still fancifully dream of going ‘sub 3.’

Links

• Classism, racism and misogyny widespread in cricket, finds report
• How cricket helped Windrush arrivals build a sense of ‘home’ in Britain
• Dr Michael Collins' academic profile
• UCL History

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