Professor Matt Cook

Overview

Biography

Matt Cook is a cultural historian specializing in the history of sexuality and the history of London in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has a background in literary and cultural theory and strong interests in cross-disciplinary work and queer, public and community history. He is an editor of History Workshop Journal, sits on the steering committee of the Birkbeck Institute of Gender and Sexuality (BIGS), and was director of the Raphael Samuel History Centre (2009 - 2018).

In 2014 Matt was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship by the Higher Education Academy for his work at Birkbeck and in archive and community settings. He has advised on a number of community and oral history, archive and museum projects including for the Pink Singers, the nightclub Duckie, Heritage England’s 'Pride of Place' and the Pitt Rivers Museum's 'Beyond the Binary'. He worked with the National Trust on their Prejudice and Pride year (2017), and co-authored the associated LGBTQ guidebook. He appears regularly on radio, occasionally on TV, and has acted as a consultant on a number of series and documentaries.

Matt joined Birkbeck in 2005 and was previously a lecturer in modern history at Keele University.

Administrative responsibilities

Assistant Dean and Head of Department

Professional activities

Matt sits on advisory boards for research projects nationally and internationally and regularly peer reviews for academic journals and publishers.

Professional memberships

Matt is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHS) and an member of the History Workshop Journal editorial collective

Research

Research interests

Matt works on the history of sexuality and gender in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on queer histories and cultures (including queer local, community and public histories), on the history of London, and on histories of home and family.

Research Centres and Institutes

Research clusters and groups

Difference, race and inequality
Public History
Mind and body
Environment: global, rural, global

Research projects

Sexualities and Localities, c. 1965-2013.

Funded by

Historic Passions: queer history making in Britain.

Funded by

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Supervisions within Birkbeck:: 3

Matt is happy to discuss the supervision of projects in 19th- and 20th-century social, cultural and public history and especially on queer histories and cultures, on histories of gender and sexuality, and on urban history. He is also interested in interdisciplinary projects and is happy to co-supervise with Birkbeck colleagues working in other schools and departments.

He has supervised successful doctoral projects on:
Queer Catholicism in the nineteenth century; The History of Euphoria; The Ghanain community in London; Literary murder in the nineteenth century sensation fiction and theatre; Folk music in post war London;
Medical treatments for homosexuality in the post world war II period;
Bachelor domesticities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries;
Fandom and sexuality;Post-war representations of the paedophile;
and Anarchist communities in Britain and Italy.

He currently supervises projects on 1980s gay radicalism; London lesbian and gay switchboard; Black queer women in interwar London and New York; and Caroline Ganley and radical women's networks in London.

Current doctoral researchers

RALPH DAY

Nature of supervision:
Principal Supervisor, Oct 2017 onwards

Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

LEE ARNOTT

Nature of supervision:
Joint Principal Supervisor, Oct 2018

Title of thesis:
Deconstructing the myth of the British military masculine ideal. Military masculinities in the British Army,1960-2020

Awarded:
2023
NICK BASANNAVAR

Nature of supervision:
Principal Supervisor

Title of thesis:
History Research

Awarded:
2019

Teaching

Matt mainly teaches on the postgraduate gender and sexuality programmes, including on the modules Theorising Gender; Queer History, Queer Cultures; and Sex, Gender and the City.

Publications

Article

Cook, Matt (2020) Local matters: queer scenes in 1960s Manchester, Plymouth and Brighton. Journal of British Studies 59 (1), pp. 1-25. ISSN 0021-9371.
Cook, Matt (2017) AIDS, mass observation and the fate of the permissive turn. Journal of the History of Sexuality 26 (2), pp. 239-272. ISSN 1043-4070.
Cook, Matt (2017) 'Archives of Feeling': the AIDS Crisis in Britain 1987. History Workshop Journal 83 (1), pp. 51-78. ISSN 1363-3554.
Cook, Matt (2014) At home with Derek Jarman. Studies in Gender and Sexuality 15 (3), pp. 244-249. ISSN 1524-0657.
Cook, Matt (2013) "Gay Times": identity, locality, memory, and the Brixton squats in 1970's London. Twentieth Century British History 24 (1), pp. 84-109. ISSN 0955-2359.
Cook, Matt (2012) Domestic passions: unpacking the homes of Charles Shannon and Charles Ricketts. The Journal of British Studies 51 (3), pp. 618-640. ISSN 0021-9371.
Dickinson, T. and Cook, Matt and Playle, J. and Hallett, C. (2012) ‘Queer’ treatments: giving a voice to former patients who received treatments for their ‘sexual deviations’. Journal of Clinical Nursing 21 (9-10), pp. 1345-1354. ISSN 0962-1067.
Cook, Matt (2010) Families of choice? George Ives, queer lives and the family. Gender and History 22 (1), pp. 1-20. ISSN 0953-5233.
Cook, Matt (2010) Families of choice? George Ives, queer lives and the family in early Twentieth-Century Britain. Gender and History 22 (1), pp. 1-20. ISSN 0953-5233.
Cook, Matt (2008) Orton in the Archives. History Workshop Journal 66 (1), pp. 163-179. ISSN 1363-3554.
Cook, Matt (2008) Review article: twentieth-century masculinities. The Journal of Contemporary History 43, pp. 127-135. ISSN 0022-0094.
Cook, Matt (2003) 'A new city of friends': London and homosexuality in the 1890s. History Workshop Journal 56 (1), pp. 33-58. ISSN 1363-3554.
Cook, Matt (2003) A new city of friends: London and homosexuality in the 1890s. History Workshop Journal 56 (1), pp. 35-58. ISSN 1363-3554.

Book

Cook, Matt (2014) Queer domesticities: homosexuality and home life in twentieth century London. Genders and Sexualities in History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230221390.
Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt, eds. (2012) Queer 1950s: rethinking sexuality in the postwar years. Genders and Sexualities in History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230300699.
Cook, Matt, ed. (2007) History of Britain: love and sex between men since the Middle Ages. Oxford, UK: Praegar. ISBN 9781846450020.
Cook, Matt and Mills, R. and Trumbach, R. and Cocks, Harry G. Cook, Matt, ed. (2007) A gay history of Britain: love and sex between men since the Middle Ages. Oxford, UK: Greenwood World Publishing. ISBN 1846450020.
Cook, Matt (2003) London and the culture of homosexuality, 1885–1914. Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture. (39), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 521822076.

Book Section

Cook, Matt (2017) The nursery. In: Gorman-Murray, A. and Cook, Matt (eds.) Queering the Interior. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781474262224.
Cook, Matt (2017) A bend in the river: queer home and heritage in a house in Hammersmith. In: Pilkey, B. and Scicluna, R.M. and Campkin, B. and Penner, B. (eds.) Sexuality and Gender at Home: Experience, Politics, Transgression. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781474239646.
Cook, Matt (2016) London, AIDS and the 1980s. In: Avery, S. and Graham, K.M. (eds.) Sex, Time and Place Queer Histories of London, c.1850 to the Present. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781474234924.
Cook, Matt (2013) Oscar Wilde’s London. In: Powell, K. and Raby, P. (eds.) Oscar Wilde in Context. Literature in Context. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107016132.
Bauer, Heike (2012) Sexology backward: Hirschfeld, Kinsey and the reshaping of sex research in the 1950s. In: Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt (eds.) Queer 1950s: Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years. Genders and Sexualities in History. Basingstoke, Uk: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 133-149. ISBN 9780230300699.
Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt (2012) Introduction: Queer 1950s: rethinking sexuality in the postwar years. In: Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt (eds.) Queer 1950s: Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years. Gender and Sexualities in History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1-10. ISBN 9780230300699.
Cook, Matt (2012) Warm homes in a cold climate: Rex Batten and the queer domestic. In: Bauer, Heike and Cook, Matt (eds.) Queer 1950s: Rethinking Sexuality in the Postwar Years. Gender and Sexualities in History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 115-130. ISBN 9780230300699.
Cook, Matt (2012) Squatting in history: queer pasts and the cultural turn. In: Roseneil, Sasha and Frosh, Stephen (eds.) Social Research after the Cultural Turn. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 93-109. ISBN 9780230241589.
Cook, Matt (2012) Queer domesticities. In: Briganti, C. and Mezei, K. (eds.) The Domestic Space Reader. Toronto, Canada: Toronto University Press. ISBN 9780802096647.
Cook, Matt (2011) Homes fit for homos: Joe Orton, masculinity, and the domesticated queer. In: Arnold, John H. and Brady, Sean (eds.) What is Masculinity? Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World. Genders and Sexualities in History. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230278134.
Cook, Matt (2009) Wilde lives: Derek Jarman and the queer eighties. In: Bristow, J. (ed.) Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend. Athens, U.S.: Ohio University Press. pp. 285-304. ISBN 9780821418376.
Cook, Matt (2007) From gay reform to gaydar. In: Cook, Matt (ed.) A gay history of Britain: love and sex between men since the Middle Ages. Oxford, UK: Greenwood World Publishing. pp. 178-214. ISBN 1846450020.
Cook, Matt (2006) Law. In: Cocks, Harry G. and Houlbrook, Matt (eds.) Palgrave advances in the modern history of sexuality. Palgrave Advances. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 64-87. ISBN 1403912904.
Cook, Matt (2006) Law. In: Houlbrook, Matt and Cocks, H.G. (eds.) Palgrave Advances in the Modern History of Sexuality. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230501805.
Cook, Matt (2006) Sex lives and diary writing: the journals of George Ives. In: Amigoni, D. (ed.) Life Writing and Victorian Culture. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate. pp. 195-214. ISBN 9780754635314.
Cook, Matt (1996) Words written without any stopping: Derek Jarman's written work. In: Wollen, R. (ed.) Derek Jarman: A Portrait. London, UK: Thames and Hudson. ISBN 9780500017234.

Business and community

Media

I am happy to receive enquiries from the media on the following topics:

LGBTQ histories and cultures
History of London

Outreach

Matt has appeared in radio and TV documentaries, debates and phone-ins. He has worked extensively with LGBTQ community groups delivering talks and workshops and has advised on a range of queer public and community history projects.