Dr Lise Butler

Overview

I am historian of modern Britain, specialising in political history, left-wing politics, and the history of the social sciences. I completed my doctorate at University College, Oxford, in 2015, and have held a Lectureship in History at Pembroke College, Oxford, and an Archives By-Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge.

My first book, Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-70 (Oxford University Press, 2020) examines the relationship between the social sciences and left-wing politics in the decades after the second world war through the ideas and networks of the sociologist, policy maker and social innovator Michael Young. My current research is focused on ideas about the future and post-industrial society in British and American social science, politics and policy in the 1960s and 70s. I am also interested in the history of environmental activism and green political thought in Britain between the 1960s and 1980s.

I am a contributing editor to Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, a member of the Churchill College Archives Committee, and a convener for the Britain at Home and Abroad Since 1800 seminar at the Institute for Historical Research. I am Programme Director for City’s new History and Politics BA, and acting Programme Director for the History BA during the spring of 2020.

I often provide commentary to the media, and have appeared on ITV, BBC Newsnight, and BBC Radio London.

Qualifications

• DPhil, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Employment

• Lecturer in Modern History, City, University of London, Mar 2017 – present
• Lecturer in History, Pembroke College, University of Oxford, Sep 2015 – Sep 2016

Languages

French (can read, write, speak and understand spoken).

Expertise

Geographic Areas

• Europe - Western

Featured publications

1. Butler, L. (2020). Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970. Oxford University PressOxford. ISBN 0-19-886289-X.

Publications by category