Dr Robert Saunders

I have four main research areas:

• the history of democracy and democratic thought in Britain
• the political and intellectual history of Thatcherism
• the relationship between Britain
• the European Union the role of religion in British political culture.

My first book, Democracy and the Vote in British Politics (link is external), explored the making of the second reform act in 1867. My second book, co-edited with Ben Jackson, was a collection of essays called Making Thatcher’s Britain (link is external), published in 2012, while my third, an edited collection called 'Shooting Niagara - and After?' The Second Reform Act and its World (link is external), was published in 2017. My fourth book, Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain (link is external), won the American Historical Association Morris D. Forkosch Prize in 2019 for the best book in British, Commonwealth and Imperial History since 1485. I have also written articles and book chapters on subjects including Chartism, the Ulster Crisis, women's suffrage, Brexit and the influence of the American Civil War on British politics.

Books

• Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain (link is external) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) [winner of the American Historical Association's Morris D. Forkosch Prize, 2019]
• 'Shooting Niagara - and After?' The Second Reform Act and its World (link is external) [edited] (Oxford: Wiley and Parliamentary History, 2017)
• Making Thatcher’s Britain (link is external) [edited with Ben Jackson] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)
• Democracy and the Vote in British Politics, 1848-1867: The Making of the Second Reform Act (link is external) (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011)

Articles

• 'Brexit and Empire: "Global Britain" and the Myth of Imperial Nostalgia', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (link is external), 48:6 (2020)
• '"A Great and Holy War": Religious Routes to Women's Suffrage', English Historical Review (link is external), 134:571 (2019)
• 'Doubtful Democrats: Democracy in Britain since 1800', Journal of Modern European History (link is external), 17:2 (2019)
• 'The Many Lives of Margaret Thatcher' [Review Essay], English Historical Review (link is external) 132:556 (2017)
• 'A Tale of Two Referendums: 1975 and 2016', Political Quarterly (link is external) 87 (2016)
• ‘God and the Great Reform Act: Preaching Against Reform, 1831-32’, Journal of British Studies (link is external) 53 (2014)
• 'The History of Parliament, 1820-1832', English Historical Review (link is external), 126 (2011)
• ‘Parliament and People: The British Constitution in the Long Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Modern European History (link is external) 6 (2008)
• ‘Chartism From Above: British Elites and the Interpretation of Chartism’, Historical Research (link is external) 81 (2008)
• ‘The Politics of Reform and the Making of the Second Reform Act, 1848-67’, Historical Journal (link is external) 50 (2007)
• ‘Lord John Russell and Parliamentary Reform, 1848-67’, English Historical Review (link is external) 120 (2005)

• Book Chapters

• 'Sir Robert Peel' in Iain Dale (ed), The Prime Ministers (Hodder and Stoughton: London, 2020)
• 'Disraeli' in T. Bale, C. Clarke et al (eds), British Conservative Leaders (Biteback, 2015)
• ‘Democracy’ in D. Craig and J. Thompson (eds), The Languages of Politics in Modern British History (forthcoming: Palgrave, 2013)
• ‘Tory Rebels and Tory Democracy: The Ulster Crisis, 1900-1914’ in R. Carr and B. Hart (eds), The Foundations of Modern British Conservatism (link is external) (forthcoming: London: Continuum, 2013)
• ‘“Let America be the Test”: American Democracy and the British Constitution, 1832-1867’ in E. Dzelzainis and R. Livesey (eds), The American Experiment and the Idea of Democracy in British Culture, 1776-1914 (link is external) (forthcoming: Farnham: Ashgate, 2013)
• ‘Languages of Democracy in Britain, 1830-1848’ [with J. Innes and M. Philp] in J. Innes and M. Philp (eds), Re-Imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions: America, France, Britain, Ireland, 1750-1850 (link is external) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)
• ‘Thatcherism and the Seventies’ in B. Jackson and R. Saunders (eds), Making Thatcher’s Britain (link is external) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)

Dr Saunders welcomes applications from candidates wishing to undertake doctoral research in the following areas:

• The history of democracy and of electoral reform in Britain since 1830
• The Thatcher and Major governments of 1979-97, and modern British politics more broadly
• The idea of America in British politics, especially in the 19th century
• British membership of the European Community/European Union, and public attitudes towards Europe
• The relationship between politics and religion in Britain since 1801