Claire Langhamer

Claire Louise Langhamer, FRHistS (born 1969), is a social and cultural historian of modern Britain. Since 2021, she has been director of the Institute of Historical Research.

Career

After growing up in North Humberside, she attended the University of Manchester, graduating with a history degree in 1991. She subsequently completed her doctorate under the supervision of Dave Russell at the University of Central Lancashire; she was awarded her PhD in 1996 for her thesis Women and leisure in Manchester, 1920–c.1960. In 1998, Langhamer started working as an academic at the University of Sussex as a lecturer; she was promoted to a senior lectureship in 2004 and was appointed Professor of Modern British History in 2014. She left Sussex in 2021 to be director of the Institute of Historical Research.

Langhamer's work has focused on the history of emotion, love, leisure and work in twentieth-century Britain, often in relation to the experiences of women. Alongside more than a dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals, Langhamer has published two single authored books, Women's Leisure in England, 1920–1960 (Manchester University Press, 2000) and The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2013).

On 1 October 2021, Langhamer became director of the Institute of Historical Research of the University of London.