Career Details

Matthew Hilton is Professor of Social History at the University of Birmingham. He did his PhD at Lancaster University and has been at Birmingham since 1997. He is a past winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize  and has been a visiting scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies , Harvard. He is currently Director of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary History (BCCH). He sits on the editorial boards  Past and Present,  Contemporary British History and History Compass.

Current Research

Matthew Hilton is currently collaborating with Dr Nicholas Crowson to research the role of non-governmental organizations in Britain since 1945. This is a Leverhulme Trust funded project which runs until 2011. The project builds on the online Database of Archives of Non-Governmental Organisations (www.dango.bham.ac.uk) and is made up of the same team of researchers: Dr James McKay and Dr Jean-Francois Mouhot. Further details of the project can be found at www.ngo.bham.ac.uk.

Past Research

Matthew Hilton�s background is in the social and cultural history of modern Britain. His first book was on the history of smoking in British popular culture. Since then he has examined many different aspects of the history of consumer society and the politics of consumption. In recent years, his interests have become more international and he has published on consumer activism in Malaysia and at the global level.

Teaching

Undergraduate

Level 2
Option: Globalisation and Social Movements

Level 3
Special Subject: Affluence, Apathy and Activism
Core course: Historical Reflections

Postgraduate

MPhil(B) in Twentieth-Century British History

MA Contemporary History

Postgraduate Supervision

Listed below are the fields in which Matthew Hilton is able to offer supervision of research postgraduates.

1. Consumer society in Britain and the rest of the world
2. British popular culture
3. Non-government organisations and civil society groups
   
   

Select Publications

Books:

Prosperity for All: Consumer Activism in an Era of Globalisation
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).  
Read an interview about this book

Choice and Justice: Forty Years of the Malaysian Consumer Movement
(Penang: Universiti Sains Malaysia Press, 2009).

(with Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel and Alain Chatriot, The Expert Consumer: Associations and Professionals in Consumer Society (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). 

(with Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel and Alain Chatriot) Au nom du consommateur: la consommation entre mobilisation sociale et politique publique dans les pays occidentaux au XX si�cle (Paris: La Decouvert, 2004).

Consumerism in Twentieth-Century Britain: The Search for a Historical Movement  
(Cambridge University Press, 2003). 

(with Martin Daunton) The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America (Oxford: Berg, 2001). 

Smoking in British Popular Culture 1800-2000 (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000). 

Articles:

The death of consumer society Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 18, 2008, pp211-236

The consumer movement and civil society in Malaysia, International Review of Social History, 52, 2007, pp. 373-406.

Social activism in an age of consumption: the organised consumer movement, Social History, 32:2, 2007, pp. 121-143.

Consumers and the state since the Second World War, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 611, 2007, pp. 66-81.

(with Malgorzata Mazurek), Consumerism, Solidarity and communism: consumer protection and the consumer movement in Poland, Journal of Contemporary History, 42:2, 2007, pp. 315-343

'Consumer protection in Britain', Jahrbuch f�r Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1, 2006, pp. 45-60 

Globalising consumers: the history of consumers as a socio-political movement', Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, 4, December 2005 pp. 18-29.

Michael Young and the consumer movement, Contemporary British History, 19:3, 2005, pp. 311-319.

The duties of citizens, the rights of consumers, Consumer Policy Review,  15:1, 2005, pp. 6-12.

Which is Which?: consumerist or anti-capitalist magazine?', History Today, 54:9, 2004, pp. 37-39.

The legacy of luxury: moralities of consumption since the eighteenth century, Journal of Consumer Culture,  4:1, 2004, pp. 101-123.

The fable of the sheep; or private virtues, public vices: the consumer revolution of the twentieth century, Past and Present,  176, 2002, pp. 222-256.

The female consumer and the politics of consumption in twentieth-century Britain�, The Historical Journal,  45:1, 2002, pp. 103-128.

(with Chris Bonell), Consumerism in health care: the case of a Voluntary sector HIV prevention organization, Voluntas International Journal of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organizations,  13:1, 2002, pp. 27-46

Retailing history as economic and cultural history: strategies of survival by specialist tobacconists in the mass market, Business History,  40:4, 1998, pp. 115-137.

Smoking gun, History Today, 50:5, 2000, pp. 36-38.

Tabs, Fags and the Boy Labour Problem in Late Victorian and Edwardian England, Journal of Social History, 28:3, 1995, pp. 587-608.

The banality of consumption, in Frank Trentmann & Kate Soper (eds.), Citizenship and Consumption (London: Palgrave, forthcoming)