Professor Keith Laybourn celebrates 50 years at Huddersfield

The beginning of September marks a very special occasion for Professor Keith Laybourn – on 1 September he will have worked at the University for 50 years.

Despite inauspicious beginnings as the son of a miner in Barnsley and his grammar school headmaster warning him to manage his expectations (advising him: “Don’t be too ambitious, lad”), Keith began his academic career at the University of Bradford, followed by a Cert HE at the University of Manchester, and a Master’s in Social History at the University of Lancaster.  While still completing his PhD from Lancaster, Keith joined Huddersfield’s newly formed Department of History as an Assistant Lecturer.  After only six months, he was promoted (he said: “I demanded the Vice-Chancellor raise me to the post of Lecturer 1!”), followed by a senior lecturer post in 1975.  After stints as head of department, he was appointed professor in 1991, and by 2012 he was allocated the title of Diamond Jubilee Professor, and then Diamond Jubilee Professor Emeritus in 2019.

Keith – who many non-historians will recognise around campus from his trademark hat – has taken great satisfaction in watching how his department and University have flourished and grown in confidence: “When I came, it was quite a small place with no more than 2,000 or 3,000 students compared with its current 20,000”, he said, describing how exciting it was to write new courses for the new students.  Keith is very proud of the “enormously talented set of people” that he has worked with over the years and of the spring board that his department has been for students and academic colleagues in their careers.  Indeed he helped to set up the first History MA offered by a polytechnic in 1977 and in the 2001 Research Excellence Framework (REF), History at Huddersfield achieved 4* - the same as Oxford University.

Over his long career, Keith has balanced his love and enthusiasm for teaching with his passion for academic research.  He has successfully supervised 43 PhDs and countless Master’s and undergraduate dissertations, and externally examined 23 PhDs.  He is a prolific writer, having written and edited over 50 books, with his latest publication on football pools and the British working class due to be finished in January.  Keith has done so while also preparing A Level papers as Chief Examiner in Modern History for the Cambridge Board in the late 1980s and early 1990s, acting as external examiner at nine universities, and holding the posts of Secretary and President of the Society for the Study of Labour History.

Although Keith has reduced his hours, he shows no sign of slowing down.  He continues to get enthusiastic praise from students for his teaching, despite the challenges the pandemic, and has been directly approached by publishers for future publications.  As he says: “My pen is not dry yet!”