Queen's University Belfast | Dr Paul Corthorn

Dr Paul Corthorn

BA (Cambridge), MA (Durham), PhD (Cambridge), FRHistS

Lecturer in Modern British History

Senior Tutor; Employability co-ordinator (S1); Joint Pathway Co-ordinator - History and Politics

Tel: +44 (0) 28 9097 3896
E-mail: p.corthorn@qub.ac.uk

Office: 15UQ.302

Paul Corthorn studied at the universities of Cambridge and Durham. Before coming to Queen’s in 2006, he held lectureships at Anglia Ruskin, Liverpool and Oxford universities. He is joint editor of the Labour History Review and an Associate of the Cold War Studies Programme at the London School of Economics. In 2009 he won a QUB ‘Rising Stars’ Teaching Award. In 2012 he was a By-Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge.

Research Interests

Paul Corthorn’s research is concerned with twentieth-century British history, particularly the ways in which it has been influenced by international developments. He has produced a book on the Left’s political and ideological responses to the rise of international fascism in the 1930s and is now working, with initial funding from the British Academy, on various aspects of the Cold War in Britain. He is also Co-Investigator of the Leverhulme-funded project ‘The Politics of Consumer Credit in the UK 1938-92’, directed by Dr Sean O’Connell.

Select Publications

Books:

The British Labour Party and the wider world: domestic politics, internationalism and foreign policy, ed. (London, 2008; paperback edn, 2012).
In the shadow of the dictators: the British Left in the 1930s (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006; paperback edn, 2012).

Articles and chapters:

'Cold War politics in Britain and the contested legacy of the Spanish Civil War' in European History Quarterly (forthcoming, 2014).
'The Cold War and British debates over the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics' in Cold War History, xiii (2013).
‘Enoch Powell, Ulster Unionism and the British nation’ in Journal of British Studies, LI (2012).
'W.E.D. Allen, Unionist politics and the New Party' in Contemporary British History, xxiii (2009).
‘Labour, the Left, and the Stalinist purges of the late 1930s’ in Historical Journal, xlviii (2005).
‘Michael Foot as Labour leader: the uses of the past’ in R. Toye and J. Gottlieb (eds), Making reputations: power, persuasion and the individual in modern British politics (London: IB Tauris, 2005).
‘The Labour Party and the League of Nations: the Socialist League’s role in the sanctions crisis of 1935’ in Twentieth-Century British History, xiii (2002).