Tom Chidwick

Profile

Tom is the Manager of the Mile End Institute and oversees all aspects of the Institute's work. He is responsible for planning and delivering the Institute's events programme, and identifying new partnerships and research projects, as well as the Institute's communications. He represents the Mile End Institute at internal and external meetings, public events and academic conferences. 

In addition to his duties at the Mile End Institute, Tom continues to pursue his own research on Britain's contemporary political history. He is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Co-Director of the Edward Heath Academic Forum, a new network to encourage the study of Sir Edward Heath's career, 'One Nation' Conservatism and the politics of the 1970s more generally. Until its closure in December 2023, he was a regular columnist for Scottish Review and contributed to the Tides of History project.

His first book, Now or Never! A History of the First Scottish Devolution Referendum, will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2026. It will be the first history of the 1 March 1979 referendum on the creation of a Scottish Assembly since 1981 and charts how devolution and Scotland’s first referendum dominated Scottish politics and public life in the 1970s.

He has also contributed a chapter on the Scottish Convention of Women and the United Nations' Year of Women to a new edited collection (Women, Power and Politics in Britain, 1945 to 1997) which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2026.

Research