Dr Matthew Grant
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Email
m.grant@essex.ac.uk -
Telephone
+44 (0) 1206 872259
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Location
6.135, Colchester Campus
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Academic support hours
Spring 2024: Tuesday 3-4; Friday 10-11; (Meeting ID: 928 530 9879)
Profile
Biography
I became fascinated by history at an early age. Reading at school, watching television, and listening to family stories gave me the sense of the past as a set of stories and narratives to be untangled. The cold war was an obvious area of study for me. I remember watching the Berlin Wall fall on TV (I was 9 years old). As a sports-mad child, I was bewildered as the shifting political landscape was mapped out onto sporting events. West Germany becoming Germany, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia fragmenting. Through football championships and Olympics, the world was changing in front of me. Now, as a professional historian, I am keen to explore how such massive political and cultural changes are understood by ordinary people. I studied history at Queen Mary, University of London, receiving my PhD in 2006. After this, I spent two years teaching at the University of Sheffield, a year as an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Manchester, before spending three years at Teesside University. I joined the History Department at the University of Essex in September 2013. I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and serve on the Peer Review College of the Economic and Social Research Council. My research covers the history of Britain since 1939, focusing on the cultural and political impact of war and conflict on the home front. I have written on cold war civil defence and security, the cultural impact of nuclear weapons, and murder in 1940s Britain. In general, I am interested in the transformation of British life in the mid-to-late twentieth century, and the way historical memory shapes peoples sense of the world. I would love to hear from anyone interested in persuing a research degree. I am currently completing a new book, Britain's Cold War Home Front: Citizens and the State, which charts the impact of the cold war on Britain. It is due to be published by Oxford University Press in 2026/27. It will examine the changing ways the public interacted with the state in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, in particular the importance of uniformed service, peace activism, and the experience of communism and anti-communism. Along with my colleagues, Professor Peter Gurney and Dr Joel Morley, I conducted an oral history project on the experience of National Service in postwar war Britain funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The results of this project are published in National Service Life Stories: Masculinity, Class, and the Memory of Conscription in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2025).
Research and professional activities
Research interests
British history since 1939
impact of war and conflict on the home front
The cold war and nuclear conflict
Citizenship in Britain
Conferences and presentations
If War Should Come
Invited presentation, Keynote presentation, Conference, Aalborg Univerisry, Denmark, 5/5/2021
Teaching and supervision
Current teaching responsibilities
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Dangerous Ideas: Essays and Manifestos as Social Criticism Capstone (CS301)
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Exploring History: Research Workshop (HR242)
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Research Project (HR831)
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Making History, Sharing History: Sources, Methods, and Audiences for Historical Research (HR935)
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Writing Cold War Lives (HR944)
Previous supervision
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 9/9/2024
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 26/6/2024
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 2/9/2022
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 2/9/2021
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 27/5/2020
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 4/9/2019
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 2/7/2019
Degree subject: History
Degree type: Doctor of Philosophy
Awarded date: 30/4/2018
Publications
Journal articles (11)
Gurney, P., (2022). The Marginalization of History. Labour History Review. 87 (3), 277-81
Grant, M., (2020). The Korean War in Britain: Citizenship, Selfhood and Forgetting. By Grace Huxford. Twentieth Century British History. 31 (3), 417-418
Grant, M., (2019). Making Sense of Nuclear War: Narratives of Voluntary Civil Defence and the Memory of Britain’s Cold War. Social History. 44 (2), 229-254
Grant, M., (2019). David M. Watry. Diplomacy at the Brink: Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden in the Cold War. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014. Pp. 228. $29.95 (cloth).. Journal of British Studies. 58 (1), 254-256
Grant, M., (2019). Chris Renwick, Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State. Journal of Contemporary History. 54 (1), 211-213
Grant, M., (2018). The Trial of Neville Heath, the Popular Press, and the Construction of the Memory of the Second World War in Britain, 1945–1946. English Historical Review. 133 (564), 1155-1177
Grant, M., (2016). Historicizing Citizenship in Post-War Britain. The Historical Journal. 59 (4), 1187-1206
Grant, M., (2013). Images of Survival, Stories of Destruction: Nuclear War on British Screens from 1945 to the Early 1960s. Journal of British Cinema and Television. 10 (1), 7-26
Grant, M., (2011). 'Civil Defence Gives Meaning to Your Leisure': Citizenship, Participation, and Cultural Change in Cold War Recruitment Propaganda, 1949-54. Twentieth Century British History. 22 (1), 52-78
Grant, M., (2008). Home Defence and the Sandys Defence White Paper, 1957. Journal of Strategic Studies. 31 (6), 925-949
Grant, M., (2003). Historians, the Penguin Specials and the ‘State-of-the-Nation’ Literature, 1958-64. Contemporary British History. 17 (3), 29-54
Books (5)
Gurney, P., Grant, M. and Morley, J., (2025). National Service Life Stories: Masculinity, Class, and the Memory of Conscription in Britain. Oxford University Press
Grant, M. and Ziemann, B., (2016). Understanding the imaginary war: Culture, thought and nuclear conflict, 1945-90. Manchester University Press. 1784994405. 9781784994402
(2016). Understanding the Imaginary War. Manchester University Press
Grant, M., (2010). After The Bomb: Civil Defence and Nuclear War in Britain, 1945-68. Palgrave Macmillan. 0230274048. 9780230274044
Grant, M., (2009). The British way in cold warfare: Intelligence, diplomacy and the bomb 1945-1975. Continuum. 9781847252296
Book chapters (14)
Cronqvist, M. and Grant, M., (2021). Remembering Desirable Futures? Civil Defence Memories and Everyday Life in Sweden and the UK. In: Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe: Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival and Preparedness. Editors: Cronqvist, M., Farbøl, R. and Sylvest, C., . Palgrave Macmillan. 209- 231. 978-3-030-84280-2
Grant, M., (2016). The imaginative landscape of nuclear war in Britain, 1945-65. In: Understanding the imaginary war: Culture, thought and nuclear conflict, 1945?90. Editors: Grant, M. and Ziemann, B., . Manchester University Press. 92- 115. 978-1-7849-9440-2
Grant, M. and Ziemann, B., (2016). Introduction: The cold war as an imaginary war. In: Understanding the Imaginary War: Culture, Thought and Nuclear Conflict, 1945-90. 1- 29
Grant, M., (2013). Freiwillige f�r das Atomzeitalter: der britische Zivilschutz zwischen Patriotismus und Freizeit 1949-54. In: Den Kalten Krieg Denken. Beitr�ge zur Sozialen Ideengeschichte seit 1945. Editors: Bernhard, P. and Nehring, H., . Klartext. 978-3837507393
Grant, M., (2013). Citizenship, Sexual Citizenship, Sexual Anxiety and Womanhood in Second World War Britain: the Case of the Man with the Cleft Chin?. In: Moral panics, social fears and the media: historical perspectives. Editors: Nicholas, S. and O'Malley, T., . Routledge. 177- 190. 9780415501613
Grant, M., (2010). Gradual Decline and Sudden Fall. In: After the Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 175- 192. 9781349302048
Grant, M., (2010). Separate Spheres of Civil Defence. In: After the Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 123- 147. 9781349302048
Grant, M., (2010). Protecting the Public. In: After the Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 58- 76. 9781349302048
Grant, M., (2010). Preparing for a Third World War. In: After the Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 36- 57. 9781349302048
Grant, M., (2010). Equipoise, Crisis and Reform. In: After the Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 148- 174. 9781349302048
Grant, M., (2010). Years of Decision. In: After the Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 99- 122. 9781349302048
Grant, M., (2010). The Hydrogen Bomb Revolution. In: After the Bomb. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 77- 98. 9781349302048
Grant, M., (2009). Civil defence and the nuclear deterrent, 1954-1968: Strategic imperative and political expediency. In: The British way in cold warfare: Intelligence, diplomacy and the bomb 1945-1975. Editors: Grant, M., . Continuum. 51- 68. 9781847252296
Grant, M., (2009). The Cold War and British National interest. In: The British way in cold warfare: Intelligence, diplomacy and the bomb 1945-1975. Editors: Grant, M., . Continuum. 1- 13. 9781847252296
Reports and Papers (1)
Grant, M., (2009). Upgrading Britain's nuclear deterrent: from V-Bombers to Trident replacement
Other (3)
Grant, M., (2017).Jonathan Hogg, British Nuclear Culture: Official and Unofficial Narratives in the Long 20th Century. Journal of Contemporary History. 52(2),SAGE Publications
Grant, M., (2014).The Nuclear Age in Popular Media: A Transnational History, 1945–1965. Social History. 39(4),Informa UK Limited
Grant, M., (2014).The Politics of Expertise: How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain. POLITICAL QUARTERLY. 85(4)
Grants and funding
2016
The Intergenerational Jazz Reminiscence Project
National Jazz Archive
2015
National Service Life Stories: masculinity, class and the memory of conscription in Britain
Leverhulme Trust
Contact
Academic support hours:
Spring 2024: Tuesday 3-4; Friday 10-11; (Meeting ID: 928 530 9879)
