Assistant Professor
Spring 2022: Thursdays 3-6PM, and by appointment
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).
'The Alternative to Perpetual Peace: Britain, Ireland and the Case for Union in Friedrich Gentz’s Historisches Journal (1799-1800)’. Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 13, No. 1 (2016), 63-91.
‘The Revenge of Sovereignty: The SNP, The Financial Crisis and UK Constitutional Reform’, Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute Working Papers, No. 20. (2015).
‘“Stay at Home”: The Politics of Nuclear Civil Defence, 1968-83’, Twentieth Century British History, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2012) 383-407.
Ph.D. - Cambridge University (2016)
M. Phil. - Cambridge University (2012)
B.A. - Oxford University (2010)