Dr Gill Cockram, BA, MA, PhD (London) F.R.Hist.S

Gill Cockram - Research interests and expertise:

Reception and influence of Ruskin’s social thought.

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.

Gill Cockram - 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.

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

Review
"'the influence of Ruskin in the period up to 1906 has not been dealt with in so thorough and careful a manner before.' - Dr.Michael Levin, Goldsmiths College, University of London 'a lucid and exciting study that restores Ruskin to his place in the Victorian firmament as a social philosopher...will be of great interest to all who study political thought in general as well as Victorian society.' - Professor Penelope Corfield, Royal Holloway, University of London 'includes a considerable amount of original research... I am confident that it will be received as the standard academic study in this field.' - Professor Gregory Claeys, Royal Holloway, University of London"

''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…'' -- Labor History

Contact:

Email: info@gill-cockram