Dr Jacob Ward 

Dr Ward is a contemporary historian, whose work spans the history of science and technology, environmental history, organisational history, and political history. He is currently Assistant Professor (tenured) in the History Department and Science, Technology, and Society Studies Research Programme at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

He is visiting Churchill College as part of his NWO (Dutch Research Council) Veni Grant, ‘The Prediction Machine: Science, Technology, and Futurology in British Government’. This project explores the history of futures research in the UK, from governmental research on resource scarcity and energy futures in the 1970s to the creation of the Technology Foresight programme in the 1990s. At Churchill Archives Centre, he will be exploring the papers of post-war figures who featured in British futures research, such as Jeremy Bray, Wayland Young, Michael Young, and Walter Marshall.

Dr Ward’s first book, Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024), explores the technological, political, and economic futures that fuelled the digitalisation and privatisation of Britain’s telecommunications infrastructure. This book won the 2024 Turriano Prize from ICOHTEC, the International Committee for the History of Technology, for the best first book by an historian of technology. The book is available to download open-access from MIT Press here. Dr Ward has also won the 2018 Duncan Tanner Essay Prize from Twentieth Century British History for an article from this project, ‘Financing the Information Age: London TeleCity, The Legacy of IT-82, and the Selling of British Telecom’. You can read the open-access article for free here.