Professor Richard Roberts
Email: richard.roberts@kcl.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7848 7049
Room K6.55
Biography
Richard Roberts is Professor of Contemporary History at the Institute of Contemporary British History at King’s College London. He graduated from University College London in History with First Class Hons and then wrote his doctorate in economic history at Cambridge and held research fellowships at Downing College, Cambridge and Princeton University. He worked for oil company BP for several years before joining the faculty at Sussex University. In 2003 he held the Houblon-Norman-George Visitor Fellowship at the Bank of England. He joined the then Centre for Contemporary British History as Director in 2007, which was then located at the Institute of Historical Research, prior to its move to King’s in summer 2010. He is holder of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award in conjunction with The Rothschild Archive.
Richard is a specialist in financial history and author of many publications in this field. His history of City investment bank Schroders was published in 1992 and of consortium bank Orion in 2001. His contemporary books Wall Street (2002) and The City (2008) are published by The Economist. Collaborations with David Kynaston include conferences and publications to mark the 300th anniversary of the Bank of England (1994), the abolition of UK exchange controls (1999) and the co-authored book City State (2003). He acted as editorial advisor on the digitisation of The Economist and the Financial Times. He is co-convenor of the Monetary History Group and the University of London research seminar in Contemporary British History. He is an Associate of Lombard Street Research, a member of the Advisory Board of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), and a member of the Political Economy Club. He works with City consultants Lombard Street Research providing long-term perspectives for reports on, for instance, the breakup of monetary unions, fiscal consolidation and Nixon’s import surcharge. His most recent report is Did Anyone Learn Anything from Equitable Life? Lessons and learning from financial crises (ICBH, September 2012). He is currently writing a book about the financial crisis of 1914.