I research the history of generations, ageing and families exploring how people's beliefs and behaviours are changing and the implications of this for work, education, wealth, politics, society and economics.
Understanding these changes has never been so important in the 2020s where politics, wealth, climate change, pandemics and the global economy are fundamentally reshaping our world and how we live in it.
Modern identity is a product of so many different factors, but for me, it has always been about place and family. I’m a native Londoner who still lives just a street away from my childhood home. My family have lived in Tooting, South London for two hundred years. My father is buried in our family garden under the apple tree where he first met my mother. My 3-year-old son is learning to ride a bike in the same park where I had my first kiss. I walk down the steps where my grandparents first laid eyes on each other every time I nip out to buy a pint of milk.
Segmenting society by age is as problematic as breaking it down by race, gender or income. But the concept of a generation is something that everyone can feel connected to - through family and peers but also something that everyone has an opinion on- whether they challenge or embrace the accepted definitions (and of course there is much to challenge). Generational analysis too often is about segmenting stereotypes rather than what it should be, understanding how we are all a product of our time.
I started my professional life as an academic, writing and teaching on the political upheavals of the 1980s, wanting to understand a period that shaped my childhood and the lives of my parents. I received my PhD from the University of Warwick and in 2015 published my first book, God and Mrs Thatcher; the Battle for Britain’s Soul - which explored the social, economic and political upheaval of late-twentieth-century Britain. My third book, Inheritocracy: It’s Time to Talk about the Bank of Mum and Dad is out in September 2024.
As a lecturer, I taught the history of capitalism to Chinese millennials at the University of Renmin, Beijing, and the history of social democracy to British millennials at King’s College London. I also set up GradTrain, now one of the leading companies helping graduate training in the UK and am also a visiting lecturer at King's College London.
As well as writing, podcasting and speaking, I am also a Non-Exec Director at The Mission Group. In 2022, I was awarded the Europa Forum's 2022 Millennial Leaders Award for my research on generations.
‘Time and family are part of the same thing really; the generation is the actual unit of time by which humanity lives.” - James Meek
(My son with his hand on my father’s grave)
