Benjamin Copeland

Benjamin Copeland
DPhil Student
benjamin.copeland@wolfson.ox.ac.uk

DPhil Research Topic

'Condemned to Individualization' - Narratives of Individualism in Late Twentieth-Century Britain

Supervisor: Ben Jackson

My main interests are in the intellectual and cultural history of contemporary Britain, though the US often features in my research. 

 

For my PhD thesis, I am looking to trace the intellectual lineages and antecedents of the ‘individualization’ discourse of the late twentieth-century. Made famous by the sociologist Ulrich Beck in the late 1980s, and later taken up by Anthony Giddens and Zygmunt Bauman, this concept referred to the weakening of traditional frames for individual identity formation – class, gender, family, neighbourhood – and the move towards people idiosyncratically ‘picking’, ‘discovering’, or ‘constructing’ an identity for themselves. Social historians of Britain have provided an empirical backing for this thesis, finding testimonies from ordinary people that support the idea that postwar British society increasingly rejected collective identities and embraced autonomy. Intellectual historians, however, have done little work on how contemporary observers interpreted this shift, which my research aims to rectify. 

 

I have previously completed a BA in History and Politics at Newcastle University, and an MPhil in Modern British History at the University of Cambridge.

 

My doctoral research is generously funded by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP and the Clarendon Fund. 

 

Previous Dissertation Titles: 

  • The ‘Me Decade’ Critiques in Britain
  • Censorship or Editorial Control? The BBC and the Anti-Nuclear Movement, 1977-1985

 

Presentations: 

  • 'Britain's 'Me Decade' Critic: Bernice Martin and Romantic Individualism,' Britain & the World Conference, 20 June 2024
  • 'The 'Me Decade' Critiques in Britain', Modern British History Workshop, University of Cambridge, May 2022

 

Scholarships & Prizes: 

  • Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP Studentship, 2025-2028
  • Cambridge Masters and Wolfson College Studentship, University of Cambridge, 2021-22
  • History First Year Prize, Newcastle University, 2018
  • Endowed Scholarship Prize, Newcastle University, 2018