Dr Amy Edwards

Contact Details:

Office: Room G.10, 71 Cotham Hill

Email: amy.edwards@bristol.ac.uk

Twitter: @aedwards_hist

Consultation Hours:  Click here to sign up 

Research Interests:

I am a social and cultural historian of twentieth and twenty-first century Britain. My research focuses on cultures of capitalism, investment, and enterprise; their interactions with civil society and the political economy; and their impact on every day life. I am especially interested in interrogating the blurred boundaries between economic, political, social, and cultural life in contemporary societies.

My forthcoming book explores investment cultures in late-twentieth century Britain. I utilise the concept of 'financial consumerism' to trace the intersection between post-war consumer society and the growth of the financial services sector. This research explores a history of financial reform in Britain which pushes beyond a framework dominated by Thatcherism and the Conservative Party. It asks how and why daily life in Britain became full of images of, and references to, the world of stocks and shares? I am particulalrly interested in those institutions, organisations, and actors external to Whitehall that contributed to the development of a mass investment culture in the closing decades of the twentieth-century. 

For my new project I explore the history of enterprise culture in Britain. This involves a study of 'enterprise' and 'entrepreneurs' in culture, politics, industry, and education. The first stages of this project trace the history of Britain's small business owners, self-employed, and business franchises, looking at how they both reflected and shaped understandings of ownership and enterprise in twentieth-century Britain. I am also interested in the history of enterprise education, Corporate Social Responsibility and social enterprises.

Teaching

I teach at all levels of our undergraduate degree, from our first and second year units 'Approaching the Past', 'Rethinking History', and 'History in Public', to the supervision of dissertations. My past and current teaching has included social activism in post-war Britain, humanitarianism and humanitarian non-governmental organisations, Britain's Cold War, British culture in the 1980s and 1990s, Thatcherism, and enterprise culture in contemporary Britain and America.

Examples of previously supervised dissertation, MPhil, and PhD topics:

• Charitible giving in post war Britain
• Maculinities in British punk
• Thatcherism, entrepreneurialism and rave culture
• Fashion and the gendering of Margaret Thatcher
• The role of the media in the 1975 European referendum
• The NEDC and Conservative Party industrial planning
• Housing policy, the 'Right to Buy', and local politics in Sheffield
• Entrepreneurialism, masculinity and race in 1980s Britain
• Corporate Social Responsibility in the oil industry
• The Ideal Home Exhibition and cultures of consumption in 1950s Britain
• Political identity in Hong Kong
• Deindustrialisation and meanings of self, place and belonging.

I am open to being contacted with regards to potential PhD projects in areas related to my research interests.