Emeritus Professor of Modern Economic and Social History

Contact Details

• Tel: +44 (0)116 252 5718
• Email: psf@le.ac.uk

Research Interests

Current research interests include economic change in the United States in the 20th century; agricultural history of the mid-West in the 1920s and 1930s; the New Deal economic and social policies. 

Professional Distinctions

• Elected Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (2007)
• Awarded the 2007 Frederick C Lubeke Award for outstanding regional scholarship. Prize given each year for the best article published in Great Plains Quarterly
• Since 2004 I have been the Honorary Secretary of the Economic History Society
• In 2005 I delivered the annual Bernard Bailyn Lecture at La Trobe University, Australia
• I received an Honorary LL.D. from La Trobe University in 2005

Publications

1. Kansas in the Great Depression: Work Relief, the Dole and Rehabilitation (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007)
2. 'Regulation and Response: Kansas Wheat farmers and the New Deal', Rural History 18:2 (2007)
3. "Kansas History and the New Deal Era: A Review Essay" Kansas History 30 (Autumn, 2007)
4. Unemployment Relief and the New Deal (North American Studies, Bernard Bailyn Lecture No.11: 2005. La Trobe University, 2006)
5. 'Relief for Wanderers: The Transient Service in Kansas, 1933-35' Great Plains Quarterly 26(Fall, 2006)
6. 'Alf M. Landon: Budget Balancer', in Virgil W. Dean (ed.), John Brown to Bob Dole: Movers and Shakers in Kansas History (University Press of Kansas, 2006), pp. 204–216
7. 'Taxation, Spending and Budgets: Public Finance in Kansas During the Great Depression', Kansas History 28 (Winter 2005-06), pp. 230–243
8. 'Relief For Wanderers: The Kansas Transient Service 1933-35', Great Plains Quarterly 26 (Fall 2006), pp. 245–264
9. The Origins and Nature of the Great Slump 1929–32
10. War Prosperity and Depression: The U.S. Economy 1917–45