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About Me

I am a social and cultural historian of modern Britain, focusing on the intersecting histories of race and womanhood in the latter decades of the twentieth century. I am interested in how race, racial thinking, and racism have shaped, and continue to shape, women’s lives in modern Britain.

Most of my research to date has focused on the history of colonial and post-colonial immigration in post-war Britain, and women’s lives, identities, and politics within this context. In particular, I write about how women outside of ‘high politics’ engaged with political issues around race, racism, and immigration, and the myriad, sometimes subtle, mechanisms they deployed to encourage change around these issues, for better or for worse. In short, I’m fascinated by how women ‘do politics’ in their everyday lives, and how this is bound up with race.

My previous and current projects have expanded on these themes around race, gender, and politics. My PhD thesis explored the experiences and activism of Black women in Britain and how they mobilised around issues such as housing, motherhood, policing, and feminism. My current project examines how white women of all political shades shaped and contributed to racist, anti-immigrationist, and fascist discourses in late-twentieth-century Britain, as well as how they constructed notions of ‘whiteness’ and white superiority. These projects have been adapted into several peer-reviewed publications in the Historical Journal, Modern British History, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, and several edited collections.

I welcome PhD supervision enquiries from any student interested in pursuing a doctorate related to any of the above themes.

Recent Publications

Jessica White, ‘“Let Me Tell You How I See It…”: White Women, Race, and Welfare on Two Birmingham Council Estates in the 1980s’, in Everyday Welfare in Modern British History, ed. by Caitríona Beaumont, Eve Colpus, and Ruth Davidson (Springer Nature Switzerland, 2025), pp. 243–63.

Jessica White, ‘Black Women’s Groups, Life Narratives, and the Construction of the Self in Late Twentieth-Century Britain’, The Historical Journal, 65.3 (2022), pp. 797–817

Jessica White, ‘Child-Centred Matriarch or Mother Among Other Things? Race and the Construction of Working-Class Motherhood in Late Twentieth-Century Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 33.4 (2022), pp. 498–521

Media Coverage

Social Media

Country Focus

Expertise by Geography

England, United Kingdom

Expertise by Chronology

20th century, 21st century

Expertise by Topic

Gender, Migration & Immigration, Politics, Race, Urban History, Women