Professor Alun Munslow BSc, PGCE, PhD

Visiting Professor of History and Historical Theory

Email contact: amunslow@tiscali.co.uk

Professor Alun Munslow has been Visiting Professor of History and Historical Theory in the Department of History at Chichester since 2005. Before that he was Professor at Staffordshire University. He has written five books, co-authored or co-edited a further five books, published thirty-five articles and book chapters, and delivered sixty conference papers.

His Ph.D (awarded 1979) addressed the political assimilation of European immigrants in the United States 1870-1920 deploying a social science constructionist approach to history. Soon after, persuaded by a range of developments in continental philosophy and the ‘linguistic turn’ he moved increasingly into the theory and philosophy of history. After a ‘long decade’ in his early-middle career working on a variety of interdisciplinary literature and history undergraduate courses, his first book was published in 1992 Discourse and Culture: The Creation of America, 1870-1970. This was an epistemologically radical study of US cultural history deploying a range of theorists including Hayden White, Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault.

Subsequently, on the nature of history, he published Deconstructing History (1997) and The Routledge Companion to Historical Studies (2000) (both re-published as substantially revised second editions in
2006). The New History followed (2003) and his most recent book is Narrative and History (2007). He is presently writing a book on scepticism, irony and history. He has also collaborated on several book collections with colleagues in the USA (a collection of experimental history with Professor Robert A. Rosenstone) and at Chichester (on a reader with Professor Keith Jenkins and an edited collection with Keith Jenkins and Dr. Sue Morgan). He is also Founding and UK Editor of Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice and editor of the book series History: Concepts Theory and Practice.