Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences, Course lead for Social Policy and Social Research

Tom's teaching and research sits at the intersection of political economy and social theory. He has published and lectured extensively on the sociology of work, class, power and research methods. His research interests include changing class patterns, paid and unpaid social care work, community and trade union organisation and the intellectual history of political economy. He is currently evaluating the National Lottery-funded Luton Fairness Taskforce programme for the University of Bedfordshire with colleagues from Culture and Community Engagement. Tom has supervised BA, MA and PhD students and is open to supervising PhD students on topics including but not limited to work, especially caring work, class, British politics and political history.

Tom took up his position in Applied Social Sciences in 2017 and is Course Coordinator for the BSc (hons) Social Policy and Social Research. He received his Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded doctorate from University College London in 2017 for a thesis on competing political discourses of British and Scandinavian welfare.

Qualifications

• PhD – University College London
• MSt – Mansfield College, University of Oxford
• BA (hons) – University of Manchester

Teaching 2024/25

Undergraduate

• ASS100-1 Introduction to Research and Social Enquiry
• ASS116-2 Power in Political Thought
• ASS145-3 Work and Welfare in the 21^st Century
• ASS139-3 Dissertation supervision

Postgraduate

• ASS130-6 Research Methods 2: Design, data collection and ethics
• ASS009-6 The Conceptual Framework

Research Interests

• Work, unemployment and deindustrialization
• Social reproduction and care work
• The sociology of class in Britain
• Twentieth-century economic and political theory

Publications

Articles, Chapters, Books

• Hoctor, T. and J. Almeida (2025) 'Reproduction, the Care Sector and the Question of Unproductive Labour in Braverman's Labour and Monopoly Capital', New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry. Forthcoming
• Hoctor, T. (2024) 'Fourteen Years of Conservative political economy. Where did it all go wrong?. Conservative Home. 8th August https://conservativehome.com/2024/08/08/tom-hoctor-14-years-of-conservative-political-economy-where-did-it-all-go-wrong/
• Hoctor, T. (2024) 'Five (or more) years of opposition - what's next for Tory political economy?' Conservative Home. 9th August. https://conservativehome.com/2024/08/09/tom-hoctor-five-or-more-years-of-opposition-whats-next-for-tory-political-economy/
• Hoctor, T. (2024) 'From Hegemony to Herrschaft? The growth and potential of a reactionary strain of politics on the British right', Journal of Political Ideologies 0(0), pp.1-19, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13569317.2024.2356531
• Hoctor, T. (2023) National Health Services of Western Europe: Challenges, Reforms and Future Perspectives; Guido Giarelli and Mike Saks (eds.); London: Routledge; 2024; 9780367689599; £130.00; hardback, Social Policy & Administration 0(0), pp.1-3
• Hoctor, T. (2022) ‘Everything old is “neo” again: towards a Marxist hermeneutic approach to political economy’, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 27(5), pp.148-161
• Hoctor, T. (2022) ‘How the signified went missing in twentieth-century economic theory: Schumpeter, Mises and Hayek and the abolition of value’, New Political Science 44(2), pp.336-352
• Hoctor, T. (2022) ‘The consumer, the market and the universal aristocracy: the ideology of academisation in England’, Journal of Consumer Culture. Online First
• Hoctor, T. (2021) ‘The Neoconservative Party, or conservatism without tradition: reading Conservative ideology in the 2020s’, Political Quarterly 92(3), pp.453-460
• Hilson, M. and T. Hoctor (2021) ‘From the “middle way” to The Nordic Way: Changing Rhetorics of the Nordic Model in Britain’, in J. Marjanen, J. Strang and M. Hilson (eds.) Contesting Nordicness from Scandinavianism to the Nordic Brand, Helsinki Yearbook of Intellectual History 2, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, pp.81-102
• Hoctor, T. (2021) ‘Beveridge or Bismarck? Choosing the Nordic model in British healthcare policy 1997-2010’ in H. Byrkjeflot, L. Mjøset and K. Petersen (eds.) The Making and Circulation of Nordic models. London: Routledge, pp.209-228
• Hoctor, T. (2020) ‘Coming to terms with the market: accounts of neoliberal failure and rehabilitation on the British right’, British Politics 0(0), pp.1-16.
• Hoctor, T. (2020) The economic response to Covid-19 and the Conservative Party’s failure to depart from Thatcherite orthodoxy’, LSE British Politics and Policy. 1^st September. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/covid19-economic-response-conservatives/
• In addition, Tom has acted as a reviewer for inter alia: Politics and Governance, The Journal of Consumer Culture and as an external evaluator for the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).
• (All publications can be found for free on ResearchGate)

Invited Conference papers, symposia and seminars

• March 2025
  BBC Radio 3 Counties. Starmer in Washington
• January 2025
  BBC Radio 3 Counties. Trump’s inauguration
• November 2024
  BBC Radio 3 Counties. US Election: Why did Harris lose?
• November 2024
  School of Culture and Society. Aarhus University. Transcribing Resistance: James C. Scott’s contributions to the literature on power and organisation. In Memoriam James C. Scott. 
• November 2024
  Historical Materialism Conference. School of African and Oriental Studies, London. ‘“Lumpenproletarianisation”, Care Work and the Question of “Unproductive Labour”: Theorising With and Beyond Braverman’s Labour and Monopoly Capital’.
• July 2024
  Heart Radio Four Counties. Interviewed on Conservative electoral defeat, broadcast across Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Essex, Cambridge.
• June 2024
  University of Bedfordshire Annual Research Conference. ‘“Lumpenproletarianisation”, Care Work and the Question of “Unproductive Labour”: Theorising With and Beyond Braverman’s Labour and Monopoly Capital’ (w/Dr Joana Almeida)
• June 2024
  De-industrialisation and class in the UK. Newcastle University Network meeting between Universities of Newcastle, Bedfordshire (co-organisers), LSE, Wolverhampton, and Nottingham.
• April 2024
  Political Studies Association Conference. University of Strathclyde. ‘Everything Old is “Neo” Again: Neoliberalism as a Symptom of Theoretical and Real Decline’
• February 2024 
  History Department Seminar Series. University of Aarhus. ‘Whatever Happened to the Affluent Worker? A Historiography of Class in the 20^th and early 21^st Centuries’
• April 2023
  Political Studies Association Conference. University of Liverpool. ‘What happened to the Affluent Worker? Advanced deindustrialisation, class and perpetual crisis in an East of England town’
• March 2023
  Human Relations 75^th Anniversary Conference. Tavistock Institute. ‘What happened to the Affluent Worker? Deindustrialisation and class in an East of England town’
• September 2022
  Political Studies Association – British and Comparative Political Economy, Manchester Metropolitan University. ‘Reactionary visions of political economy for the post-pandemic era’.
• June 2022
  University of Bedfordshire Annual Research Conference 2022. ‘The Conservative Party and Ideology in an Age of Internationalisation on the Right’
• February 2022
  Guest speaker: Gender Studies Postgraduate Winter School. ‘Women-friendly welfare states? Gendered theories of welfare’. London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research
• February 2022
  Guest Lecture: Research Series – Law School, Arden University ‘The Death of Conservatism?’
• July 2021
  Guest Lecture: Gender Studies Postgraduate Summer School. ‘Women-friendly welfare states? Gendered theories of welfare’. London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research
• March 2021
  Political Quarterly Special Issue Workshop. Andrew Gamble and the Conservative Party
• February 2020
  Guest Lecture: Gender Studies Postgraduate Winter School. Guest Lecture: ‘What happened to the Affluent Worker? The gendered nature of the decline of affluence in Luton’. London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research.
• March 2019
  Third Nordic Challenges Conference, Copenhagen Business School. Paper: ‘Taking back control, but how much? Norway, Canada and the Brexit debate’.
• April 2018
  BBC Radio 3: Free Thinking, Learning from Sweden. Arts and culture radio programme on the social and political links between Britain and Sweden. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p064vcvx
• March 2018
  Second Nordic Challenges Conference, Centre for Nordic Studies, University of Helsinki. Paper: ‘A research agenda with(out) a history: rediscovering the Freudian origins of nation branding’.
• October 2018
  The Making and Circulation of Nordic models. Network meeting at the Norwegian Institute, Sciences Po, Paris.
• March 2017
  Global Challenges: Nordic Experiences, University of Oslo. ‘“It is a bit like IKEA: everything is simple and the same”. Is there a Nordic model of New Public Management in British public policy?’
• December 2016
  Rhetorics of Nordicness network meeting, Centre for Nordic Studies, University of Helsinki. With Prof. Mary Hilson “Rhetorical uses of the Nordic model in political and ideological debates in the UK during the 2000s and 2010s”.
• June 2016
  4^th International PhD Conference of the Association for Political History Neoliberalism with a Nordic face? UK governance networks and flexicurity c.2000-2015
• March 2016
  School of Culture and Communication, University of Aarhus. A New Economic Celebrity: Denmark and flexicurity

Contact Details

E: tom.hoctor@beds.ac.uk