Gareth Millward completed his PhD at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on the relationship between disability voluntary organizations and the development of what we now call “disability policy” in the United Kingdom after the Second World War. Dr Millward has also held post-doctoral positions at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the University of Warwick and the University of Birmingham, working on topics as diverse as vaccination policy, medical certification, and the interaction between voluntary and state institutions in Britain’s National Health Service.
His work focuses on how the British welfare state developed during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a particular interest in health and social security. What fascinates him is how the design of welfare services informs and is informed by lay understanding of what welfare “ought to be” and the tensions caused when this common-sense idea of justice does not match the day-to-day operation of state services.
Dr Millward is also keen on using and developing new methodologies around using archived internet sources to tell social, political, and cultural histories of the turn of the millennium.
His book Vaccinating Britain: Mass Vaccination and the Public since the Second World War was published in 2019 by Manchester University Press, and his latest book Sick Note: A History of the British Welfare State is due to be published by Oxford University Press in 2022.
For more information about Gareth Millward, please refer to the SDU Research Portal.
