Fellow and Director of Studies in History
Cambridge CB3 0JG
Biography:
Alastair Reid was born in Glasgow in 1953, and educated at Glasgow Academy and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he also held a research fellowship from 1979 to 1983. Since 1983 he has been a Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Girton College, Cambridge, and since 2010 Visiting Professor of History and Policy at King's College London.
Subject groups/Research projects
Departments and Institutes
Research Interests
His main research focus has been on the history of British trade unions, advocating a new paradigm which emphasizes the distinctiveness of industrial sectors, the influence of long waves in organizational growth and the importance of continuities in popular liberalism. This has been developed in a general survey, United We Stand, and a case study of the shipbuilding industry, The Tide of Democracy.
Teaching
He supervises undergraduates on a wide range of topics in modern British social and cultural history, for Paper 11 in Part I and for dissertations in Part II.
Other Professional Activities
Between 1986 and 1998 he was co-founder and editor of a project to record video Interviews with Historians, completing almost 30 interviews with subjects ranging widely from Geoffrey Elton to Eric Hobsbawm, edited versions of which are available to purchase in DVD format at http://store.london.ac.uk/browse/product.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=98
In 2002 he was co-founder and editor of the History & Policy website http://www.historyandpolicy.org which became the backbone of one of the UK's leading examples of public engagement in the arts and humanities. He directed the project as a whole during its institutionalization at King's College London in 2012 and is currently joint convenor of its Trade Union Forum, bringing together historians and trade union officials to improve today's policy-making through a better understanding of the past.
Key Publications
United We Stand: A History of Britain's Trade Unions (Allen Lane, 2004; Penguin, 2005)
The Tide of Democracy: Shipyard Workers and Social Relations in Britain, 1870-1950 (Manchester University Press, 2010)
Other Publications
Social Classes and Social Relations in Britain, 1850-1914 (Macmillan, 1992; Cambridge University Press, 1995)
A Short History of the Labour Party (11th edition, Macmillan, 1996; 12th edition, Palgrave, 2005), with Henry Pelling
as editor
Currents of Radicalism: Popular Radicalism, Organised Labour and Party Politics in Britain, 1850-1914, with Eugenio F. Biagini (Cambridge University Press, 1991)