Dr Gill Cockram, BA, MA, PhD (London) FRHistS

Gill Cockram - Research interests

Ruskin’s influence on nineteenth century economic and political theorists:

J.A. Hobson and new liberalism;

Frederic Harrison and positivism;

Christian socialism.

Eighteenth and nineteenth century intellectual history.

Publications include:

Papers given on aspects of Ruskin’s social and intellectual thought at the Institute of Historical Research in London, Italy, Lancaster University, University of Sheffield and New Lanark. Review of Michael H. Lang’s book, Designing Utopia: John Ruskin’s Urban Vision for Britain and America (Black Rose, 1999), for the Utopian Studies Society and the entry on Ruskin for the Encyclopedia of Nineteenth – Century Thought (Routledge, December 2005, pp. 410-14). Further publications include a paper entitled ‘Hierarchical Utopias: Ruskin’s fear of Democracy’ published August 2005 in the Journal of Generalism and Civics. This was a paper given at 6th International Conference of the Utopian Studies Society on Utopias and Globalisation. Also an article entitled ‘Fourier and the English Christian Socialists’ translated into French for the Cahier Charles Fourier published in June 2008. Ruskin Birthday Address, ‘The Interpretation of History in Ruskin’s Social Thought’, 8 Feb. 2009, Church of St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, London. Published in The Ruskin Review and Bulletin, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 5-15.

Review of Stuart Eagles' book After Ruskin: The Social and Political Legacies of a Victorian Prophet, 1870 - 1920 (Oxford University Press, 2011), published in the online journal The Eighth Lamp: Ruskin Studies Today, No. 6.

Articles on Ruskin and Christian Socialism in G. Claeys (Ed) Encyclopedia of Modern Political Thought, C.Q Press (2013).

Gill G. Cockram, Ruskin and Social Reform: Ethics and Economics in the Victorian Age (I.B. Tauris, 2007).

Review

''This is a fine work, a product… of some considerable scholarship, and it adds significantly to our understanding of the permeation of Ruskin’s ideas amongst the late-Victorian and early-Edwardian intelligentsia…It also reminds us of the continuing pertinence of Ruskin’s political economy, not least his distinction between ‘illth’ and wealth; particularly when the contemporary proliferation of the former has come to jeopardize our very existence…'' -- Noel Thompson, Labor History.

Contact:

Email: gill.cockram @btinternet.com