Professor Simon Szreter

at Faculty of History, University of Cambridge

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Professor of History and Public Policy, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge

Dr Simon Szreter’s research focuses on History and Public Policy, especially in relation to comparative demographic, social and economic change.

His current research interest include a study of qualitative and quantitative sources on the history of fertility decline in Britain, with a new project on the venereal diseases and fertility decline; the history of mortality public health and politics; and the comparative history of identity registration systems in world history.

He is a long-term honorary research associate of the Cambridge Group for the history of Population and Social Structure and currently investigating newly-available child mortality and fertility data from the 1911 census. He is the joint holder of the Wellcome Strategic Award 2009-2014, for which he is researching the theme of 'Generation to Reproduction'.

His is the co-editor of The Big Society Debate: a New Agenda for Social Welfare? (2012), which offers historically grounded, internationally informed, and multidisciplinary analysis of Big Society policies and considers the challenges involved in translating the ideas of the Big Society agenda into practice.

In addition he is currently supervising research on topics including

  • British government dietary policy and the influence of pressure groups c.1970-90
  • Disinfection in Victorian cities c.1850-1914
  • Public Health, politics and sanitation in Coimbra, Portugal c.1880-1930'
  • In news articles

    What can History tell us about current health inequalities?

    Professor Szreter used historical cases in Britain to demonstrate how the nature and scale of health inequalities within a society are produced by the social and cultural environment of values and incentives experienced by the rich, as much as by the poor (who are the usual focus of attention).