of a social historian
An important aspect of any historian’s work is considering how the past and the present interact. Previous generations of historians may have dismissed this, insisting the past must be taken on its own terms, but most historians today would acknowledge that is not so simple. Even if we do not draw distinct policy lessons from our historical research, the concerns of our time are present in our work simply by providing our own intellectual and cultural context. It is impossible for our work not to be informed by us, however rigorously we adhere to empirical standards in our research and writing. One of the advantages of blogging is that it offers a space for thinking through those relationships between past and present, between us and our work.
The posts below all draw upon historical understanding in a variety of ways to comment on current policy issues, usually relating to my twin key themes of healthcare and charity.
Academic book reviews tend to take a long time before they appear in print. Some take longer than others. David Cameron was still Prime Minister when I promised to write a review of Armine Ishkanian and Simon Szreter's edited collection on the 'big society' for the journal Cultural and Social History. By the time I …
Sarah Kliff said an interesting thing recently. Of course, the Vox senior editor says a lot of interesting things. If you're at all interested in the twists and turns of US healthcare politics you should absolutely being following what she says. But one thing she said recently particularly jumped out at me. Talking on Vox's …
Continue reading "Those undeserving ‘other people’: from Obamacare to Brexit"
A couple of months back I wrote a short piece for the People's History of the NHS blog comparing the way healthcare featured in both the UK's EU referendum campaign and the Australian federal election. Following the news that the campaign slogan/promise (delete depending upon political stance) has been quietly but officially dropped - of …
