Professor David Edgerton FBA

Biography

David Edgerton graduated from St John’s College Oxford and Imperial College London. After teaching at the University of Manchester he became the founding director of the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Imperial College London (1993-2003) where he was also Hans Rausing Professor. He joined the History department with the Centre on its transfer to King’s in August 2013. He was a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellow, 2006-2009, and gave the 2009 Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Prize Lecture at the Royal Society. He is a member of the Council of the Architectural Association and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Research interests and PhD supervision

• History and historiography of twentieth-century Britain
• Global histories of technology and production
• The British state and British militarism
• Material histories of modernity
• Technocrats and experts in the modern world.

David Edgerton is known for challenging the welfarism and declinism of much of the older historiography of twentieth-century United Kingdom and for developing the concepts of the British warfare state and liberal militarism. He is also known for a new approach to the histories of science and technology focussing on the asking of historical questions and avoiding the innovation and academic-centric accounts derived from the discourses of interested parties and which opens up the possibility of fresh material histories of modernity. His The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 (Profile, 2006) is available in French, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese translation. His most recent book is The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: a twentieth-century history (Penguin 2019).

He welcomes inquiries from prospective research students. See the research portal for his current and past PhD students.

Teaching

David Edgerton teaches MA options Contemporary British History and in the History of Science and Technology and well as undergraduate courses.

Expertise and Public Engagement

David Edgerton has appeared in many radio and TV programmes and regularly gives talks to many official and public bodies on a wide range of topics. He writes regularly for the daily and weekly press, including the Guardian, New Statesman, and many others.