Sam Blaxland

I am a post-doctoral fellow, and tutor, in the history department at Swansea University. I work on a project researching the history of the University in Swansea: its 2020 centenary is fast approaching. This involves archival research and an ambitious oral history project.

Much of my work and methods are influenced by my recently completed PhD, which was fully funded by the AHRC, and centred on the study of the Conservative Party in Wales from 1945-1997. For much of the post-War period the Conservatives Party was the second most popular party in Wales, in terms of both the share of the vote it received and the number of parliamentary seats it won. My research explored the reasons as to why this history has been neglected in Welsh political studies. It analysed the structure and the nature of the Conservative Party in Wales, focusing particularly on its grass-roots; what the party in Wales stood for; what splinter groups tended to associate with the Party; the sympathetic Welsh rhetoric they attempted to deploy; and the broader scale British political issues the Conservatives concentrated on which place into context Wales’, and the Conservatives’, significance in British politics. I remain interested in modern, contemporary and current politics, having written for newspapers and think-tanks on the matter. More broadly, my interests, and my teaching and lecturing areas, lie in the field of nineteenth and twentieth century British political and social history.