Peter Mandler was born in the USA in 1958, educated at Oxford and Harvard Universities, and has taught in Britain since 1991 and in Cambridge since 2001, where he is now Professor of Modern Cultural History at the University of Cambridge and Bailey College Lecturer in History at Gonville and Caius College. He writes on the cultural, social and intellectual history of Britain since c. 1800 and on the history of the humanities and the social sciences in the English-speaking world. From 2012 to 2016 he served a four-year term as President of the Royal Historical Society. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
British history since c. 1800, especially cultural, intellectual and social history; the history of the humanities and social sciences in Britain and America; concepts and methods in cultural history; educational history and policy.
1) The history of the humanities and social sciences. My most recent book, Return from the Natives: How Margaret Mead Won the Second World War and Lost the Cold War, tells the story of the 'national character' studies through which Mead and her closest associates such as Ruth Benedict and Geoffrey Gorer sought to apply anthropological and psychological methods to international relations at a time of rapid globalization. I am now pursuing further research in this area, with a special interest in the diffusion of the language of social science into everyday life through the media of non-fiction bestsellers, journalism and higher education, and in the comparative histories of the humanities in the anglophone world particularly since the 1960s: see below for forthcoming publications in History of the Human Sciences and Past & Present.
2) Education in Postwar Britain. My work for the Royal Historical Society involved me in a wide range of contemporary debates about the place of history in modern British society, and this led me into historical research on the changing map of educational policy and provision in Britain over the last century. The fruits of this research have appeared in a series of Royal Historical Society lectures, 'Educating the Nation', in 2013-16, and I am currently writing a book, entitled 'The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain's Transition to Mass Education since the Second World War', to be published by Oxford University Press in 2020. In turn this work led to a collaboration with Laura Carter and Chris Jeppesen with whom I will be engaged in 2017-21 in a four-year project funded by the ESRC on 'Secondary Education and Social Change in the UK since 1945' (for more information, see our website at https://sesc.hist.cam.ac.uk/).
I have also had a longstanding interest in the history of collecting. With colleagues at Caius College I have developed the undergraduate Themes & Sources option on the history of collecting (which I currently teach with Dr Melissa Calaresu) and over the years I have supervised a number of PhD students in this area (including two with AHRC collaborative doctoral awards) who now work in a variety of jobs from academic posts to museum curatorships to positions in the heritage industry.
I am open to proposals from potential research students at Ph.D. level on topics in modern British cultural, intellectual and social history, and in the history of the humanities and social sciences. Current Ph.D. students are working on the supply of materials to Victorian artists; George IV as collector; the collection of Renaissance decorative arts in the 19th century; the 'aspiring author' 1870-1914; heritage preservation at the local level in the 19th century; the psychology of development in India; early transnational histories of anthropology; European art markets in the early 20th century; liberalism in 19th-century Madras; the presentation of the natural world in new media in the interwar period.
Although I am on leave in the academic year 2018-19, I will be supervising MPhil students in 2019-20 and welcome proposals or enquiries from prospective students.
New York-Cambridge Training Collaboration (NYCTC): Since 2015 PhD students in 20th-century British history have had the opportunity to participate in a Cambridge-New York training collaboration, in association with Susan Pedersen of Columbia University and Guy Ortolano of New York University. Activities include a joint reading group (see below) and occasional workshops on both sides of the Atlantic, to compare intellectual approaches, styles of teaching, field definitions and employment opportunities, and to expose students to new research materials that can shed light on 'Britain in America's Century'. For more information, please consult our website at http://nyctc.history.columbia.edu/.
For undergraduates, I lecture and supervise for the two modern British economic, social and cultural history papers in Part I (10 and 11). I also convene the Themes and Sources Option on the History of Collecting with Dr Melissa Calaresu.
For postgraduates, I run with colleagues a Ph.D. reading seminar, which in 2018-19 will meet jointly (by videoconference) with staff and students from Columbia University and New York University, as part of the Cambridge-New York Training Collaboration in 20th-century British History (see above).
I also convene the Faculty's research seminar in modern cultural history, with Dr Lucy Delap and Dr Lawrence Klein. It meets on alternate Wednesdays in term; all welcome. Please consult the seminar listings on the Faculty website for further details of this term's programme.