Dr Emily Baughan

My research examines ideas about society, the economy and politics through attitudes towards children, care and family life. I see domestic space, milk, toys, nursery schools and playgroups as texts for reading ideas about ideal citizenship, international society, local community and the family. 

My work places the history of modern Britain within wider international and imperial contexts. It examines how ideas about childhood and welfare in Britain shaped international humanitarianism and the emergence of postcolonial welfare states. It also casts light on the ways that  (post)colonialism enabled the creation of the British welfare state and (for elites) mitigated its decline through postimperial migration and the racialised undervaluing of care work. 

Neoliberalism in the Nursery 

Taking its cue from Denise Riley’s classic feminist text, War in the Nursery, my new project examines how shift from social democratic to neoliberal welfare policies has shaped the care of the very young in Britain. Children were the first beneficiaries of an expanding welfare state in the twentieth century; they are the first victims of its decline. Journalists, advocacy organisations, and politicians warn of the current ‘childcare crisis’, ‘maternity care crisis’, ‘children’s mental health crisis’ and rapidly declining birthrate. This study represents the first attempt to trace the origins of these contemporary ‘crises’ not just in the recent context of austerity politics and the covid-19 pandemic, but in the welfare state itself. I propose that the social democratic ‘Fordist’ welfare model, which centred the nuclear family as a unit of support, seeded neoliberal individualism and the decline of collective systems of welfare. I explore changing models of care in the spaces young children inhabited from cradle to school age: the hospital, the home, the playground, the playgroup and the nursery school. Doing so, I cast light on the reinforcing ideologies of the nuclear family and market capitalism.

Past research

Saving the Children, Humanitarianism, Internationalism and Empire, 1914-1970 (University of California Press, 2021) Shortlisted for the RHS Whitbread Prize and the SHCY Grace Abbott Book Prize

My first book tells the story of the rise of international humanitarianism through the work of the NGO, Save the Children. I argue that British international humanitarianism was born out of the peculiarity of Britain’s imperial role in an emerging international world order. British humanitarianism sought to create an international order favorable to British imperial rule, while seeking to downplay British imperial ambition. After empire’s end, British internationalism became a means of performing Britain’s ongoing global role.  Aid was more than just a set of performances designed to showcase Britain’s role in a changing world. It was very direct attempt to shape the world in Britain’s own image. In the book, I look at the practices as well as the principles of international humanitarianism, as it was being enacted in eighteen different countries across a fifty-year time span. While Save the Children claimed to be ‘saving children to save the world’ but the vision of the world it was trying to save was a very specific one, based on international capitalism and colonial rule.