Professor Andrew Edwards is Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities. Professor Edwards came to Bangor University in 1994 as a ‘mature’ student. He graduated with first class honours in History in 1997 before embarking on an MA in Labour History which he completed with distinction in 1998. Between 1998 and 2002 he was a PhD student at Bangor under the supervision of the late Professor Duncan Tanner, conducting research into the decline of the Labour party and the rise of Plaid Cymru in north-west Wales in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2002 he was appointed research officer on an ESRC funded project on the history of Welsh devolution and in 2004 was appointed as Lecturer in modern British and Welsh History. He was co-director of the Welsh Institute for Social and Cultural Affairs (WISCA) at Bangor from 2006 to 2010 and was Director of Teaching and Learning for the College of Arts and Humanities from 2011 to 2012. He was appointed Dean of Arts and Humanities in August 2012 and was awarded a Chair in 2015. He was appointed Dean of Arts, Humanities and Business in October 2017.

I work on various aspects of twentieth century Welsh and British social and political history. His research interests include: Labour Party history; devolution and constitutional change; political change; the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher; Plaid Cymru and nationalist politics in Wales; Oral history. 

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Ongoing research projects

ESRC funded Devolution and Constitutional Change project on ‘Devolution, National Identity and Institutional Politics: Welsh Devolution 1885-2001’: Professor Edwards was a researcher on this project from October 2002 to October 2004 and has remained a member of the project team since 2004. He contributed to and co-edited the first volume from the project Debating Nationhood and Governance, 1885-1939: Perspectives from the Four Nations (Manchester University Press, 2006) and also co-edited and contributed to a festschrift ‘The art of the possible: Politics and governance in modern British history 1885-1997: essays in memory of Duncan Tanner’ (Manchester University Press, 2015) in memory of the late Professor Duncan Tanner, who directed the project until his death in 2010. Further details of the book can be found here: http://www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9780719090714

Thatcher, Thatcherism and the Conservative Party in Wales: Professor Edwards is currently undertaking research on the impact of Thatcher, Thatcherism and the policies of the Conservative government on Wales in the 1980s. He is also working with colleagues from the Bangor Business School, undertaking research that explores the impact of Thatcherism on managerialism, entrepreneurialism and management education in the 1980s and beyond. 

Other research related activities: I am a regional networker [Wales] for the Oral History Society and provides help, advice and practical training in oral history to individuals and community groups. For more on the Oral History Society go to http://www.oralhistory.org.uk/. For advice relating to local/national oral history projects, please contact me by phone or e-mail.

Professor Edwards is Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and was awarded a Bangor University Teaching Fellowship for excellence in teaching and learning in 2009. He teaches in the following areas:

BA (undergraduate)

Britain in the Sixties [40 credit third year Special Subject]
Doing Oral History [20 credit second/third year ‘topic’ module]
Thatcher’s Britain: Politics, Society and Culture in the 1980s [20 credit second/third year ‘topic’ module
USA 1945-9/11 [20 credit second/third year ‘general’ module]

MA (postgraduate taught)

The Politics of the Labour Party, 1918-83 

PhD research

Please contact me if you are interested in conducting research in any of the following areas:

• Devolution and constitutional change; 
• Political change in the twentieth century; Welsh Conservatism; 
• Plaid Cymru and nationalist politics in Wales; 
• Labour party history
• Oral history

PhDs supervised to completion

Dinah Evans, project on the reconstruction of Swansea after WWII (2008)

Michelle Walker, AHRC funded project on in-migrants in north Wales, 1970-2010 (2011) 

Marco Giudici, Bangor 125th Anniversary funded project on Italians in Wales after 1945 (2012)

Cai Parry Jones, AHRC funded project on ‘The history of the Jewish diaspora in Wales’, (with Dr Nathan Abrams, School of Creative Studies and Media) (2014) 

Anna Olsson-Rost, ‘The Politics of Education. Reform and response: Impact and outcomes in secondary schools in Anglesey circa 1944-1979’, AHRC funded (2016)

Martin Hanks, ‘Temporary Migration to Wales during the Second World War’, Bangor 125th Anniversary bursary (2017)

Email: a.c.edwards@bangor.ac.uk

Phone: (+44) 01248 382537