N. Piers Ludlow

Biography

Professor Ludlow studied for his undergraduate degree at Trinity College, Oxford before moving on to St Antony's College Oxford to study for his D.Phil. He was then a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford until he joined LSE in 1998.

Professor Ludlow’s main research interests lie in the history of Western Europe since 1945, in particular the historical roots of the integration process and the development of the EU. He has just completed a monograph looking in some detail at Roy Jenkins’ presidency of the European Commission, which was published by Palgrave in April 2016. He also works on the Cold War, and in particular West-West relations during the East-West struggle. In the medium term he plans to write a detailed study of the development of transatlantic relations during the Cold War – and in particular of the way in which the Americans sought to balance their bilateral and multilateral dealings with their Western European allies, and the way in which the European allies jostled for the ear of the Americans. A first taste of this research appeared in his Journal of Cold War Studies article in 2013.

Courses

Professor Piers Ludlow teaches the following courses:

At undergraduate level:

• HY206: The International History of the Cold War, 1945-1989
• HY238: The Cold War and European Integration

At Master's level:

• HY400: Crisis Decision-Making in War and Peace, 1914-2003 (taught jointly with other faculty members)
• HY411: European Integration in the Twentieth Century (taught jointly with other faculty members)

Publications

Professor Piers Ludlow has written three books: Dealing with Britain: The Six and the First UK Membership Application (Cambridge University Press, 1997) The European Community and the Crises of the 1960s: Negotiating the Gaullist Challenge (Routledge: 2006) and Roy Jenkins and the European Commission Presidency, 1976-1980: At the Heart of Europe (Palgrave, 2016), and (jointly) edited five more, Les administrations nationales et la construction européenne: une approche historique (1919-1975) (Peter Lang, 2005); European Integration and the Cold War: Ostpolitik-Westpolitik, 1965-1973 (Routledge, 2007); Europe and the End of the Cold War: A Reappraisal (Routledge, 2008); Visions of the End of the Cold War in Europe, 1945-1990 (Berghahn, 2012) and The European Commission 1973-1986. History and Memories of an institution (Luxembourg: Publication Office of the EU, 2014).

Other recent publications include:

• ‘Safeguarding British identity or betraying it? The role of British “tradition” in the Parliamentary Great Debate on EC membership, October 1971’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 53/1 January 2015;
• ‘Jacques Delors (1985-1995): navigating the European stream at full flow’ in J. van der Harst and G. Voerman (eds.), An Impossible Job? The Presidents of the European Commission, 1958-2014(John Harper, 2015);
• ‘The New Cold War and the Expansion of the EC – A Nexus?’ in J. Laursen (ed) The Institutions and Dynamics of the European Community, 1973-83 (Nomos, 2015);
• ‘Creating the expectation of a collective response: The impact of summitry on transatlantic relations’ in F. Romero and E. Mourlon-Druol (eds), International Summitry and Global Governance: the Rise of the European Council and the G7 (Routledge, 2014);
• The Real Years of Europe: US-West European Relations during the Ford Administration’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 15/3 Summer 2013