In September, and with great sorrow, we said goodbye to Professor Roger Middleton, the project’s co-investigator, as a result of his retirement. We are pleased to report that the Arts and Humanities Research Council has confirmed the appointment of Dr James Freeman as his replacement. James is Lecturer in Digital Humanities in the Department of History at the University of Bristol. He brings to the project his expertise in the changing nature of political rhetoric in postwar Britain and his skills in data analysis and visualisation.

This change in personnel has also led to an adjustment of the project’s end date – which is now scheduled for the end of July 2018.

‘Thatcher’s Pension Reforms and their Consequences’, an AHRC’s research project, is very pleased to announce that Gregg McClymont, formerly Labour’s shadow pension minister from 2011-15, has joined its advisory board. Gregg is head of retirement savings at Aberdeen Asset Management, a role that encompasses defined contribution pensions strategy, research and implementation. Before taking up that role he was Labour MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East from 2010 to 2015 . He is also a modern British historian, having taken his PhD and taught at the University of Oxford and written a number of publications in the field.

Unfortunately our email subscription facility – which sends out emails when posts are made to the site – seems to have gone haywire and we have had to suspend it until we figure out what  is going on. Apologies.