Stafford, James

Office Hours

Fall 2022: Wednesdays 3-5pm, Thursdays 12:15-1:15, and by appointment.

Interests and Research

James Stafford specializes in the political and intellectual history of Ireland, Britain and Western Europe since 1750, with a particular interest in questions of political economy and international order.

A second book project meanwhile considers the role of commercial treaties and treaty-making in the inter-imperial world order of the nineteenth century, tracing the long and surprisingly controversial history of the ‘most favoured nation’ clause as an instrument of European economic expansion and collaboration.

Additional research interests include the history of state formation and territorial governance across the different nations that compose the modern United Kingdom; the political and ideological consequences of nuclear weaponry in twentieth-century Britain; and the history of land and agrarian reforms in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Europe

Stafford is a frequent commentator on contemporary British politics and was Co-editor of Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy from 2015-20. In 2021-22 he is co-convening the University Seminar in Modern British History. He is also a member of the New York-Cambridge Training Collaboration (NYCTC).

‘“Stay at Home”: The Politics of Nuclear Civil Defence, 1968-83’, Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2012) 383-407.