麻豆传媒

I am a historian of childhood, adolescence and chronological age in twentieth- and twenty-first century Britain. I teach modern British history from c.1832 to the present day.

I completed my AHRC-funded PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2015. I then taught first at the University of Oxford and then at Durham University before commencing a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in May 2018 at Queen Mary University of London. I started at 麻豆传媒 as a NUAcT Fellow in January 2020 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in January 2025.

I am a historian of twentieth- and twenty-first century Britain, and am particularly interested in age, education, self-narratives and oral history, memory and selfhood, and gender and sexuality.

My first research project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, focused largely on primary and secondary education in England and Wales between c.1918 and c.1979, exploring how concepts of childhood changed within schools in this period, and how this shaped teachers' relationships with their students. This resulted in my monograph, A Progressive Education? How Childhood Changed in Mid-Twentieth-Century English and Welsh Schools (Manchester University Press, 2020). I have also worked on on children in care in inter-war England, on extraordinary' children in British science fiction and horror in the 1950s and 1960s, and, most recently, chronically and terminally ill children in both Britain and the US since 1945, focusing on a case study of children with cystic fibrosis.

My postdoctoral research was funded by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship. I have written a book based on this research, We Have Come To Be Destroyed: Growing Up In Cold War Britain, which will be out with Yale University Press London in April 2026. This book offers one of the first histories of modern adulthood through the eyes of children and young people, thinking about how chronological age shaped ideas about citizenship, democracy and the welfare state, and who should hold power in society. It argues that, in Britain, we are still grappling with new ideas about childhood, adolescence and adulthood that emerged in the mid 1950s. By foregrounding sources that were directly written or spoken by young people under 21, We Have Come To Be Destroyed rewrites familiar histories of Cold War Britain, challenging big historical narratives like ‘the permissive shift’ and the rise of neoliberalism. I have also co-edited a book (with Dr Maria Cannon), Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z (University of London Press, 2024) which considers how ideas about adulthood have changed over time.

In 2012-13, I received an AHRC student-led Collaborative Skills Development Grant for my project, Talking History, to collaborate with Rambling Heart theatre company delivering oral history and storytelling training to graduate students and early career researchers in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Cambridge. In May and June 2017, I received funding from Oxford’s Public Engagement with Research Seed Fund to run follow-up workshops with children and adolescents in Bath. In the future, I intend to continue public engagement work with young people, and frequently speak at local schools and youth groups.

At 麻豆传媒, I co-convene the Life Cycles, Bodies, Health and Disease research strand, and run the HCA Academic Writing Group. I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2020.

My website is https://drlauratisdall.wordpress.com and I am on X/Twitter as @TisdallLaura and BlueSky as @lauratisdall.bsky.social.

I teach modern British history from c.1832 to the present day. I am also Degree Programme Director for History (V100) and Politics and History (VL12).

I convene the third-year BA Special Subject HIS3346 The Rising Generation: Youth, Age and Protest in Cold War Britain, and also currently contribute to the second-year BA Connected Histories module HIS2322 Diversities of Sexuality and Gender in History.

I supervise BA and MA dissertations and have supervised or am supervising the following PhDs:

Sam Johnston (2025-): 'An Historical Analysis of Education Policymaking in England and Wales under the Thatcher and Major Governments', second supervisor.

Jianhao Xu (2023-): 'Shaping Feelings: Emotional History and Left-Wing Children's Fiction in the Anti-Japanese War', second supervisor.

Louis Bonnett (2020-5): ‘The Natural Habitat of Youth? The Relationship Between Childhoods and the Environment in North-East England, 1985-2010’, AHRC Northern Bridge funded, external second supervisor at Northumbria University.

Lucy Walsh (2021-5): ‘The Treatment and Experience of Children with Cancer in Britain since c. 1945’, NUAcT funded, lead supervisor.

Heather Mann (2016-20): 'A Global Holocaust Education? The Battle Between Global and National Memory in British and French Education from 1980 to the Present Day', AHRC funded, external co-supervisor at the University of Oxford.

I was awarded Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy in January 2017.

• Articles

  • Tisdall L. . History 2022, 107(378), 949-964.
  • Tisdall LA. . Gender and History 2022, 34(2), 495-513.
  • Tisdall L. . History of the Human Sciences 2021, 34(5), 8.31.
  • Tisdall L. . Contemporary British History 2017, 31(1), 24-46.
  • Tisdall L. . Medical Humanities 2016, 42(4), e4-e9.
  • Tisdall L. . Cultural and Social History 2015, 12(4), 489-507.
  • Tisdall L. ‘That was what life in Bridgeburn had made her’ reading the autobiographies of children in institutional care in England, 1918–46. Twentieth Century British History 2013, 24(3), 351-375.

• Authored Books

  • Tisdall L. . Yale University Press London, 2026.
  • Tisdall L. . Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2019.

• Book Chapters

  • Tisdall L. . In: Cannon M; Tisdall L, ed. Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z. London: University of London Press, 2024, pp.193-213.
  • Tisdall L. . In: Pooley S; Taylor J, ed. Children’s Experiences of Welfare in Modern Britain. London: University of London Press, 2021, pp.197-219.

• Edited Book

  • Cannon M, Tisdall L, ed. . London: University of London Press, 2024.