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

Tom is a political sociologist whose research and teaching sit at the intersection of political economy and social theory. He has published and lectured extensively on the ideological direction of the British Conservative Party, the relationship between political theory and the economy, and work and welfare in the UK and Scandinavia. This focus on how ideas are put into practice is reflected in his teaching agenda which takes concepts like ideology, power and work and asks students to think about how they manifest themselves in the real world. He has also taught extensively on research methodologies at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He is currently co-Principal Investigator of the research project: What Happened to the Affluent Worker? Deindustrialisation and Identity in Luton.

Tom took up his position in Applied Social Sciences in 2017 and is Course Coordinator for the BA (hons) Social Sciences. 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 2022/23

Undergraduate

• ASS100-1 Introduction to Research and Social Enquiry
• ASS116-2 Power in Political Thought
• ASS068-2 Comparing Welfare Internationally
• ASS145-3 Work and Welfare in the 21^st Century
• ASS010-3 Ideas and Issues in Globalisation
• ASS139-3 Dissertation supervision

Postgraduate

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

Research Interests

• Conservatism, reaction and The Conservative Party
• Political sociology and history of the international Right
• Twentieth-century economic, social and political theory
• Work, unemployment and deindustrialization

Publications

Articles, Chapters, Books

• 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

• 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