Dr. Ben Harker

Biography

Ben Harker joined the University of Manchester in 2014 and has previously worked at the University of Salford. He was an AHRC Leadership Fellow from 2016 to 2017 for the project entitled 'Wars and Position: Marxism and Civil Society', which was a collaborative effort with Manchester's People's History Museum. His published books include 'Class Act: Cultural Political Life of Ewan MacColl' (2007) and 'Chronology of Revolution: Communism, Culture, and Civil Society in Twentieth-Century Britain' (2021). His academic articles have appeared in various prestigious journals such as ELH, History Workshop, Textual Practice, and Literature & History. Harker currently serves as Chair of the Raymond Williams Society and is on the editorial board of 'Twentieth-Century Communism'. His primary research interests include the culture of interwar Britain, cultural periodicals from 1920 to 1980, Marxist theories of culture, Popular Front politics, the invention of modernism, late modernism, Virginia Woolf, working-class writing, and the intersection of writers and communism in Britain, including topics related to the BBC and cultural production under the political left. He welcomes inquiries from prospective doctoral students with interests in these specialisms.

Research Interests

Experience