Miko Konii-Govier

DPhil Research Topic

'Working-class Heroes' and the Crisis of Representation in Postwar Britain

Supervisor: Matthew Grimley

My main interests are in the social and cultural history of twentieth-century Britain, with a particular focus on narratives of social mobility in the postwar period. 

My DPhil research examines a collection of writers, playwrights, filmmakers, and actors associated with the ‘Kitchen Sink’ movement of 1950s and early 1960s Britain. While historians have extensively studied working-class representation in this period, less attention has been paid to cultural producers themselves and the ways their biographies became increasingly entangled with publicity, marketing, and criticism. These figures were subjected to unprecedented levels of media attention which, encouraged by publicity, drew from their biographies to construct elaborate mythologies about their working-class backgrounds and supposed ‘anger’ at the Establishment. This project explores how the commodification of working-class experience produced specific dilemmas for individuals deemed ‘representative’, and how they used their public platforms to negotiate competing claims of class and selfhood through the mediating presence of the market. By conceptualising these ‘working-class heroes’ as both agents and objects of cultural production, my research aims to reconnect strands of postwar cultural history with recent developments in social history, such as the rise of popular individualism, that have long been overlooked in favour of outdated political narratives. 

I have previously completed a BA in History at Trinity College, University of Oxford, and an MPhil in Modern British History at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge. 

My doctoral research is generously co-funded by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP, the Reuben Scholarship fund, and the Clarendon Fund. 

Previous Dissertation Titles: 

• ‘‘I’m me and nobody else; and whatever people think or say I am, that’s what I’m not’: Production of the Authentic in Alan Sillitoe’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958)’ (Supervised by Dr. Aurelia Annat). 

• ‘Education, Social Mobility, and the Rise of the Scholarship Girl in Postwar Britain’ (Supervised by Professor Peter Mandler). 

Scholarships and Prizes: 

• Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP Studentship (Oxford, 2025-2028)
• Clarendon scholarship (Oxford, 2025-2028)
• Lucy Cavendish Simms Prize (Cambridge, 2025)
• Cambridge Masters and Lucy Cavendish College Studentship (Cambridge, 2024-2025). 
• Honorary Cambridge Trust Scholar (Cambridge, 2024-2025). 
• Gibbs Proxime Accessit Prize (Oxford, 2023)
• Congratulatory First-Class Honours (Oxford, 2023)
• Knox Prize for History (Oxford, 2023)
• Trinity College Ford Exhibition (Oxford, 2020-2023)