Professor Jose Harris, Visiting Professorial Fellow (October 2006 to April 2007)
Professor Jose Harris did her PhD under Richard Titmuss' supervision whilst at Cambridge and came to the LSE as a lecturer in the Department of Social Administration in the late 1960s. She is Beveridge's biographer and is currently Professor of Modern History at St Catherine's College, Oxford. Jose Harris is the author of William Beveridge: a biography (1977, second edn. 1997) and of numerous other works on the history of social thought and social policy. Her most recent book is Civil Society in British History: ideas, institutions, identities (2003).
Her current research is concerned with looking much more broadly and deeply at intellectual debates in wartime Britain in both the public and the private spheres. Concern with keeping the war effort going and with producing realistic proposals for the post-war era had put a premium on practicality and on narrowing the focus of political and intellectual controversy. Private correspondence however suggests that there were many individuals and coteries of intellectuals who were by no means so cheerfully optimistic about post-war parliamentary democracy and reformed capitalism as official sources suggest.
During her time at the School, Professor Harris aims to further the production of a monograph that identifies and explains some of the major currents in intellectual life in Britain during the Second world war.
Professor Harris gave a seminar on Wednesday 24th January.
Professor Harris's lecture was reorganised as a research seminar for Wednesday 20th June in the Institute of Historical Research.
