About our staff

I was born in west London and grew up in Paddington and Notting Hill in the post-war years. I attended a Secondary Modern school, even though I passed the notorious 11-plus examination, this kind of school being almost the lowest level of the class-driven state schooling then available.

After school from the age of 16 I worked in a variety of jobs, more or less menial, and then attended the University of Keele in the 1960s (University motto: “Thanke God for All”).

I did my graduate work at Balliol College, Oxford and then taught in London, followed by a long period at the University of Manchester, to 2007.

After this, retiring in order to get some work done, I have been peripatetic. For those who wish to have further information see my Field Day Review essay of 2014, “The Journey West”, also the 2015 essay, “Time Thickens”.

Emeritus Professor of History, University of Manchester

Visiting Research Fellow, Trinity College Dublin

Please see www.patrickjoyce.info for more information.

Summary of research interests

• Britain & Ireland
• Europe
• North America

• Culture
• Economic History
• Ideas
• Imperialism
• Labour
• Landscapes & Monuments
• Language & Literature
• Material Culture
• Migration
• Politics
• Religion
• Society
• Urban

• Eighteenth Century
• Nineteenth Century
• Twentieth Century & After

I write about the history of power and social relations in Britain and elsewhere from the 18th century onwards, working chiefly on the state, the city, and the nature of freedom and liberalism down to contemporary times. My last book was a long term history of the British state, from a Foucauldian and new materialism perspective, called The State of Freedom (CUP 2013). I am working on the history of neoliberalism, in conjunction with my London-based “Foucault, political life and history” group.

I am also engaged in a memoir-based history of Britain since 1945. The first two parts of this have appeared in Field Day Review, 2014 and 2015, and are available for download on my website

With Colin Gordon I run a study group called “Foucault, political life and history”. This meets at regular intervals at the London School of Economics and the Institute of Historical Research, the first meeting being on 19 June 2015.

The group includes historians, geographers, political theorists, sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, and others. The key topics of the group are historicising neoliberalism, sociotechnical governance and south Asian governmentalities.

I am greatly interested in employing the social sciences in history, and my current project at Edinburgh is with the anthropologist Janet Carsten, on house, home and the political.

I am also writing a memoir-cum-history of Britain and Ireland since 1945.