Dr Alix Green

Biography

I moved into academia after a career in policy, strategy and government affairs. I did my PhD on using history in public policy development, having completed my BA and MPhil degrees in History at Clare College, Cambridge. I am a historian of contemporary Britain and I teach and supervise on a range of topics in 20th/21st-century British history and public history. My research focuses on political culture, government and policymaking. I also have a long-standing interest in historical practice and the roles and responsibilities of historians in public life, taking contemporary politics, policymaking and business as underexplored contexts for historical work. My recent book, 'History, Policy and Public Purpose: Historians and Historical Thinking in Government' draws on notions of public scholarship, expertise and the nature of historical thinking. My work aims to blur the boundaries between disciplines and to emphasise the complementarity of different forms of knowledge, so I'm interested in co-production and co-design as approaches to research. These interests are reflected in a long-standing collaboration with the John Lewis Partnership Heritage Centre. Our latest co-designed project has focused on the Partnership's historical approach to pay and performance to inform how the business approaches these strategies in the future. From this ongoing collaboration, the Centre's manager and I have been working with a new network of business archivists to develop models of collaboration between historians and archivists that demonstrate the value of archival collections and historical research to parent organisations. Outputs from this project have been co-written guidance for business archives on collaboration with academics and an accompanying series of short films. I founded the Public History Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in London and I served as a juror for the new national Public History prize. I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and I am currently serving as one of the Society's two Honorary Directors of Communications. Joining the Essex History department in 2016 was a second return to my home town of Colchester.

Qualifications

• PhD University of Hertfordshire,

• MPhil University of Cambridge,

• BA (Hons) University of Cambridge,