Research on post-1945 History

Our key strengths within post-1945 history are: Welsh and British political and social history; the political and cultural history of continental Europe, especially Germany and Southern Europe, and of the USA from a transnational perspective.
Areas of expertise include:

  • Americanisation (Sedlmaier)
  • consumption (Papadogiannis, Sedlmaier, Shapely)
  • devolution (Edwards, Wiliam)
  • governance (Edwards, Shapely)
  • Labour Party and Plaid Cymru (Edwards, Shapely, Wiliam)
  • migration (Papadogiannis, Shapely)
  • oral history (Edwards, Papadogiannis, Wiliam)
  • political violence (Sedlmaier)
  • policy and politics of everyday life (Edwards, Papadogiannis, Sedlmaier, Shapely, Wiliam)
  • protest cultures (Papadogiannis, Sedlmaier)
  • sexuality (Papadogiannis)
  • Thatcherism (Edwards)
  • travel (Papadogiannis)
  • urban spaces (Sedlmaier, Shapely)
  • voluntarism (Shapely)
  • war (Sedlmaier)
  • nationalism and national identities in Wales and Britain (Edwards, Wiliam)
  • transnational flows across Europe and North America
  • youth cultures (Papadogiannis, Sedlmaier, Wiliam)

Our research exploits opportunities for partnerships and collaborations with other Schools in the University: Papadogiannis and Sedlmaier have formed alongside Dr. Helena Miguélez-Carballeira a research cluster on radical protest since the 1960s. Papadogiannis and Shapely are also contributing to a series of talks held by staff members of diverse Schools within the College of Arts, Humanities, Law and Business on protest around 1968 and the response of the establishment.

Overall, our research has attracted significant external funding, as manifest in the following projects: the ESRC-funded project on ‘Devolution, National Identity and Institutional Politics: Welsh Devolution 1885-2001’ (Edwards); ‘The Continuation of Politics with Other Means: War and Protest, 1914–2011’ (Sedlmaier),  funded by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship by the European Commission; the AHRC-funded ‘Governance and Exclusion: Inner City Britain, 1957-1981’ project (Shapely); the ‘Public and Private Sector Partnerships and the Emergence of the Entrepreneurial City: Historical Strategies in the Development of Policy in Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Birmingham, 1945-1974’ project (Shapely), financially supported by the British Academy; ‘Power, Policy and Consumers’ (Shapely), funded by the British Academy; and ‘The Labour Party and the Politics of Housing in Manchester and Salford 1945-1987’ (Shapely), supported by the Leverhulme Trust.

Finally, there are a number of ongoing projects associated with post-1945 history. Peter Shapely is currently working on the Conservative government’s reactions to the 1981 riots. It is a project that is an extension of the AHRC Fellowship ‘Governance and Exclusion’. It focuses on race, urban deprivation, unemployment, policing, local government relations and efficacy and on economic regeneration policies. Nikos Papadogiannis is working on two projects: one explores cross-border youth travel in Europe during the Cold War from the perspective of both cultural diplomacy and youth lifestyles. The other explores the radicalisation of Greek migrants in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. Alexander Sedlmaier is currently writing an overview history of protest during times of war in the period from the First World War to the Iraq War. He is also working on the labelling of political and subcultural deviance as dropouts and outsiders in West Germany between the late 1960s and the early 1980s.