Dr Ben Griffin

Degrees, Awards and Prizes

BA, MA, MPhil, PhD

Research Themes

My research is focused on the ways in which gender has shaped political processes in Britain since the late eighteenth century. I am particularly interested in the history of masculinity, and the ways in which changing ideas about masculinity have shaped the behaviour and expectations of political elites. My first book, The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain, argued that changes to women’s rights were not simply the result of changing ideas about women but also changing beliefs about masculinity, religion and the nature of the constitution and, in doing so, it demonstrates how gender inequality can be created and reproduced by the state. The book won the Royal Historical Society's Whitfield Prize 2012 for the best first book on British History. I have written about how changes in the history of masculinity have affected British politics in ‘Masculinities and parliamentary culture in modern Britain’ in Sean Brady, Christopher Fletcher, Rachel Moss and Lucy Riall, eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture in Europe (February 2018).

I have recently completed a book called The Gender Order and the Judicial Imagination: masculinity, liberalism and the law, c. 1760-1960 (forthcoming), which examines how changing ideas about masculinity interacted with new forms of legal knowledge to reshape the gender order in Britain between 1760 and 1960. I have published an article about the gender politics of the law called ‘Paternal rights, child welfare and the law in nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland’, Past and Present (2020). I have also written about the history of efforts to distinguish between law and politics in ‘Liberalism, the law and parliament in modern British politics’, in Paul Readman and Geraint Thomas, eds., Culture, thought and belief in British political life since 1800 (Boydell, 2024).

I am also interested in historiographical questions about how we might write histories of masculinities and power, something that I wrote about in ‘Hegemonic masculinity as a historical problem’, Gender & History 30.2 (2018). I have also written about the conceptual confusion that underpins contemporary claims that masculinity is in crisis: ‘Perceptions of crisis in the history of masculinity: power and change in modern Britain’, in Matt Houlbrook, Katie Jones and Ben Mechen, eds., Men and masculinities in modern Britain (Manchester, 2024). You can access a free download here.

In recent years I have also written two general surveys dealing with innovative features of nineteenth-century political and constitutional history. You can access my essay about ‘Monarchs, Prime Ministers and Cabinets’ for free online here. My essay about the history of public scrutiny of parliamentary politics, ‘Staging authority in British politics: parliament and political culture in the long nineteenth century’ can be found in Eva Giloi et. al, eds., Staging authority (De Gruyter, 2022).

Responsibilities

I teach the Part I papers on British political history 1700-1914 and 1867-present.  I also teach a third year course on ‘The politics of gender in Britain, 1790-1900’.

I have also recently supervised third-year dissertations on ‘The memory of Palmerston among later 19th century politicians’; ‘Communism within the political propaganda of the Conservative Party, 1931-39’; ‘Joseph Chamberlain, Liberal Unionism and the politics of coalition’; ‘Popular Conservatism in 19th century Colchester’; and ‘Aldershot and the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1867-1886’.

I am currently supervising a PhD on the development of state welfare provision in the early twentieth century.

Roles with the University

• Associate Professor in Modern British History

Other

My PhD won the Prince Consort and Thirwell Prize and the Seeley Historical Medal (2005).

My first book, The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain, won the Royal Historical Society's Whitfield Prize 2012 for the best first book on British History.

With Lucy Delap I curated the Cambridge University Library exhibition The Rising Tide: Women at Cambridge, which ran from October 2019 to March 2020. This attracted more than 53,000 visitors.

I have appeared on two BBC television series about aspects of nineteenth-century British history: Groundbreakers: Ulster’s Forgotten Radical, Isabella Tod (broadcast 27 October 2013); and Amanda Vickery’s new series Suffragettes forever. I also made several appearances on the Radio 4 series ‘British Liberalism: the Grand Tour.’

Extra Links

• Ben's page on the Faculty of History's website
• Follow Ben on Bluesky