Dr Steven Thompson


BA, PhD (Wales) Photograph of Dr Steven Thompson.

Contact

Email: sdt@aber.ac.uk
Office: B17
Phone: 1737

Profile

Dr Steven Thompson BA, Ph.D (Wales) is a historian of the modern period with specific interest in the history of Wales and Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His research interests include the history of medicine, the provision of welfare, and labour history. His current research is focused on the mixed economy of medical and welfare provision in south Wales from c.1780 to 1950. He also has research interests in the history of housing, folk-song revivals, and the history of sport.

Research

Steven Thompson is interested in the history of nineteenth and twentieth century Wales and Britain and has specific research interests in the history of health and medicine, the provision of social welfare, women and gender, and the labour movement. All of these interests come together in the large-scale research project in which he is currently engaged. This project focuses on the mixed economy of medical and welfare services in industrial south Wales from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. It aims to evaluate the provision made by public authorities, voluntary and philanthropic organisations, self-help and mutualist organisations, employers, and families and neighbourhood networks. He also has research interests in the folk-song revivals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and is keen to pursue a comparative approach to the English and Welsh revivals. Lastly, he is building upon his earlier research into the history of housing with further work on building societies and clubs, employer provision of housing, and labour movement campaigns to improve working-class standards of housing.

As secretary of Llafur: Welsh People’s History Society he was responsible, often in conjunction with other organisations and institutions, for arranging the events that comprise the Society’s annual programme. Recent day-schools include Women and Politics in Twentieth-Century Wales (held in Pontypridd); Regenerating the Valleys: Policy Research, Social Reform and the Regeneration of the South Wales Valleys (Blaenavon); The Life and Work of Menna Gallie (Ystradgynlais); Merthyr Tydfil: The Civic Tradition (Merthyr Tydfil); From Welsh Metropolis to Capital City of Wales: Cardiff 1880-2000 (Cardiff); Debating Devolution in Wales (Bangor). He has been editor of the Llafur journal since 2008. More information about the Society and its journal can be found at www.llafur.org.

Staff Publications

2009

  • 'Brodyr trwyadl mewn tywydd garw: Welfare provision and the social centrality of the South Wales Miners' Federation', Welsh History Review, 24, 4 (2009), pp.141-67.

2008

  • 'The Bicycling Craze of the 1890s in Wales', Transactions of the Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion, 2007, 14 (2008), pp.114-26.

2006

  • Unemployment, Poverty and Health in Interwar South Wales (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2006), pp.256.
  • 'Unemployment, Poverty and Women's Health in Interwar South Wales', in Pam Michael and Charles Webster (eds), Health and Society in Twentieth-Century Wales (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2006), pp.98-122.
  • 'Review article: Class Cohesion, Working-Class Homogeneity and the Labour Movement in Industrial South Wales', Llafur, 9, 3 (2006), pp.81-91.

2005

  • 'Chwiw Feicio Cymru'r 1890au' [The 1890s Bicycling Craze in Wales], Cof Cenedl, 20 (2005), pp.133-65.

2004

  • 'Conservative Bloom on Socialism's Compost Heap': Working-Class Home Ownership in South Wales, c.1890-1939', in R. R. Davies and Geraint H. Jenkins (eds.) From Medieval to Modern Wales: Historical Essays in Honour of Kenneth O. Morgan and Ralph A. Griffiths (Cardiff, 2004), pp.246-63.

2003

  • 'That beautiful summer of severe austerity': Health, diet and the working-class domestic economy in south Wales in 1926', Welsh History Review, 21, 3 (2003), pp.552-74.
  • 'A Proletarian Public Sphere: Working-class self-provision of medical services and care in South Wales, c.1900-1948', in A. Borsay (ed.), Medicine in Wales, c.1800-2000: Public Service or Private Commodity? (Cardiff, 2003), pp.86-107.
  • 'To relieve the sufferings of humanity, irrespective of party, politics or creed: Conflict, consensus and voluntary hospital provision in Edwardian south Wales', Social History of Medicine, 16, 2 (2003), pp.247-62.

2002

  • 'Hospital Provision, Charity and Public Responsibility in Edwardian Pontypridd', Llafur, 8, 3 (2002), pp.53-65.
  • 'Without any distinction of sect, or creed, or politics'?: Charity and hospital provision in nineteenth-century Aberystwyth', Ceredigion, XIV, 2 (2002), pp.38-56.