Professor Matthew Hilton
Chair of the Mile End Institute Advisory Board
Profile
Matthew Hilton obtained his PhD from Lancaster University in 1996. From 1997 until 2016 he worked at the University of Birmingham, becoming Professor of Social History in 2006. From 2011 he was the Director of Research for the College of Arts and Law and then the Deputy Head of College. He has been a visiting scholar at Centre for European Studies, Harvard University and in 2002 was a winner of the Phillip Leverhulme Prize. He served on the REF2014 sub-panel for History, sits on the Advisory Board of the AHRC and is an editor of Past and Present. His research has focussed on the history of consumption, social activism, non-governmental organisations, charities and humanitarianism. His most recent books include Prosperity for All: Consumer Activism in an Era of Globalisation (Cornell, 2009), with James McKay, Nicholas Crowson and Jean-François Mouhot, The Politics of Expertise: How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain (Oxford, 2013) and, with Kieran Connell, On Varna Road: The Photography of Janet Mendelsohn (Birmingham: IKON, 2016). He has co-edited several collections of essays, including The Ages of Voluntarism (OUP, 2011) and Transnationalism and Contemporary Global History (P&P/OUP, 2013). He joined Queen Mary as Vice-Principal for Humanities and Social Sciences in September 2016.