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My research examines ideas about society, the economy and politics through attitudes towards children, care and family life. I see domestic space, milk, toys, nursery schools and playgroups as texts for reading ideas about ideal citizenship, international society, local community and the family. 

My work places the history of modern Britain within wider international and imperial contexts. It examines how ideas about childhood and welfare in Britain shaped international humanitarianism and the emergence of postcolonial welfare states. It also casts light on the ways that  (post)colonialism enabled the creation of the British welfare state and (for elites) mitigated its decline through postimperial migration and the racialised undervaluing of care work. 

Love’s Labour, an intimate history of childcare

My current book project, Love’s Labour: a history of childcare, examines the political economy of childhood, exploring the dialogue between Western states and families about the care of their youngest members in the modern era. Tracing patterns of childcare from the decline of private wetnursing in the mid-nineteenth century to the present-day marketized sector, Love’s Labour shows that patchy childcare solutions have usually expressed the tensions between the economic citizenship of women and children. While modern states became increasingly interested in the future economic potential of children, welfarist governments sought to deny women’s productive potential outside traditional caring roles. This tension has only been exacerbated by the retrenchment of welfare provision that began in the 1970s. The book situates British history within a wider international framework: it compares childcare within states that have shared a similar industrial trajectory across Europe and North America, while weaving together intimate portraits of care work gathered from transnational archival research.

Past research

Saving the Children, Humanitarianism, Internationalism and Empire, 1914-1970 (University of California Press, 2021) Shortlisted for the RHS Whitbread Prize and the SHCY Grace Abbott Book Prize
My first book tells the story of the rise of international humanitarianism through the work of the NGO, Save the Children. I argue that British international humanitarianism was born out of the peculiarity of Britain’s imperial role in an emerging international world order. British humanitarianism sought to create an international order favorable to British imperial rule, while seeking to downplay British imperial ambition. After empire’s end, British internationalism became a means of performing Britain’s ongoing global role.  Aid was more than just a set of performances designed to showcase Britain’s role in a changing world. It was very direct attempt to shape the world in Britain’s own image. In the book, I look at the practices as well as the principles of international humanitarianism, as it was being enacted in eighteen different countries across a fifty-year time span. While Save the Children claimed to be ‘saving children to save the world’ but the vision of the world it was trying to save was a very specific one, based on international capitalism and colonial rule.