Speaker: Prof Glen O’Hara, Oxford Brookes University
Abstract: Contemporary historians of the period since the 1990s are met with a dilemma. On the one hand, there is a wealth of material about almost everything available at their fingertips: online statistics, stored government websites, newspaper archives, opinion polling numbers, photograph libraries and the like. But on the other hand, this means that they are faced with trawling through huge amounts of information if they are to feel as if they have thoroughly covered any topic. How do we tackle this paradox? This short paper will discuss the author’s own experience in writing the history of New Labour, and consider some future remedies for information overload.
Bio: Glen O’Hara is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at Oxford Brookes University. He is the author of a number of books about contemporary Britain, including The Politics of Water in Post-War Britain (2017) and most recently New Labour, New Britain? How the Blair Governments Reshaped the Country (2026). He is now working on his next book, Kingdom Come: A History of the Future in Modern Britain.