Skip to main content
Durham History Department
Student walking outside the Department of History

Political Cultures

The Political Cultures research theme draws together researchers who engage with the concept of politics in their work. We are interested in sharing and challenging definitions of ‘the political’, understood broadly as the exercise or contest of power.

A political culture is the means by which the basic question of politics – who gets what – is challenged or defended. Many members of the theme focus on the ways in which cultures inform political actions.

We prosper from a wide range of methodological approaches, including:

  • the history of political ideas, concepts and languages
  • prosopography and quantification
  • the use of visual and material sources
  • and anthropological and sociological theories of culture or the state

Most of all, we see our research historicising political cultures to test the agency or coercion of individuals in the context of institutions, material circumstances, and mentalités. This is a necessarily expansive subject, stretching from the politics of parliaments and courts to the politics of the marketplace or the kitchen table.

Postgraduate researchers in the department benefit from a rich and diverse community studying political cultures, as well as the exceptional collections of Durham University Special Collections and other local archives. The theme primarily hosts workshops to explore and discuss first drafts of work by members of the department.

Staff