I joined UL in 2026 as Full Professor of History, having previously worked as Professor, Senior Lecturer and Lecturer at the University of Keele, UK, and before that as Teaching Fellow in International History at the London School of Economics. I studied History as an undergraduate at Clare College, Cambridge, and conducted my MA and PhD at Queen Mary College, University of London.

My research focuses on contemporary British history, particularly on Britain's relations with the European Community and Union, Britain's nuclear weapons policies and international position during the Cold War, women in British politics, and on social and cultural histories of contemporary warfare. 

My book, Our Boys: The Story of a Paratrooper (Allen Lane, 2018) focused on the experiences of British paratroopers before, during and after the 1982 Falklands war. It received the Longman/History Today Book Prize, the Templer Medal Book Prize and the Wellington Medal for Military History, and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. Ian Jack's review in the Guardian can be found here: Our Boys by Helen Parr review – an outstanding account of soldiers, the Falklands and masculinity | History books | The Guardian

I am currently working on a social history of death in British military service after 1945. I received a 2023 British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship which enabled me to conduct interviews and to work with an independent photographer, Dr Stuart Griffiths, to trace shifting attitudes towards death and remembrance of contemporary British conflicts. BA/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowships 2023 | The British Academy

I currently teach the third year module: Contesting the Past: Writing History; and the fourth year modules: Empire, Nations, Union: Europe 1848-1992; and War and memory in Britain and Europe since 1914, and contribute to the first year module: Doing History.

I have supervised research students studying war and memory, contemporary soldiering, international diplomacy, British foreign policies and Britain's relations with Europe. I have co-supervised AHRC funded projects with the Imperial War Museum and History of Parliament Trust. 

I would be interested to hear from research students working on contemporary Britain, social and cultural aspects of war and memory, Britain's relations with Europe, Cold War, gender and war, gender and British politics.