Name Peter Catterall | ||
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Books The Royal Academy of Engineering, The Making of Channel Four People also search for Wolfram Kaiser, Harold Macmillan, Adrian Smith, Colin Seymour-Ure, Kate Morris | ||
Peter Paul Catterall (born 1961) is a British academic historian who, since 2016, has been Professor of History and Policy at the University of Westminster. His research has focused on twentieth-century history and politics, the mass media, conflict studies and nationalism.
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Career
Catterall graduated from Cambridge University with a history bachelor of arts (BA) degree in 1984, and then completed a doctorate (PhD) at Queen Mary University of London in 1989, having successfully defended his thesis on religion and politics in inter-war Britain. He was a research fellow at the Institute of Contemporary British History (1989–90) and Director of the Institute until 1999. From 1999–2000 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Westminster Churchill Institute. In 2000, he returned to Queen Mary to teach history and politics until 2012, when he was appointed Reader in History at the University of Westminster; four years later, in 2016, he was promoted to Professor of History and Policy.
Research
Catterall specialises in the history of the twentieth century. He was founding editor of the journal National Identities. He has worked in conflict studies and nationalism, and on twentieth-century history, including the history of mass media, and as editor of the diaries of Harold Macmillan. In Northcliffe's Legacy, he explores the role of news media in the "persistence" of popular misunderstandings of Einstein's Theory of relativity.