Matt Cook (historian)

Matthew "Matt" Cook FRHistS^[1] (born 1969)^[2] is a social and cultural historian specializing in LGBTQ and queer history. Since October 2023, he has served as the Jonathan Cooper Chair of the History of Sexuality at Mansfield College, Oxford University. The appointment makes him the UK's first professor of LGBTQ+ history.^[3]

Professor Matt Cook FRHistS
Born	1969 (age 55–56)
Title	Jonathan Cooper Professor of the History of Sexuality
Children	3
Academic background
Alma mater	University of Sheffield (BA) Queen Mary University of London (MA, PhD)
Academic work
Discipline	History
Sub-discipline	History of sexuality LGBT history Cultural history History of London
Institutions	Keele University Birkbeck, University of London Mansfield College, Oxford

Cook was educated at a state secondary school in Staffordshire and received his BA from the University of Sheffield and his MA and PhD from Queen Mary University of London.^[4] He then served as a lecturer at Keele University from 2002 to 2005. He went on to teach for 18 years at Birkbeck College, University of London, where he ultimately was named professor of modern history and head of the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology.^[5] While at Birkbeck he also directed the Raphael Samuel History Centre.^[6]

Cook worked with the National Trust in 2017 on their Prejudice and Pride programme and co-authored its associated guidebook. He has also advised on archival projects related to the history of gender and sexuality, including English Heritage's Pride of Place and the Pitt Rivers Museum's Beyond the Binary.^[7] He is a series editor of the Queer and Trans Histories series at Manchester University Press^[8] and an editor of History Workshop Journal.^[9]

Personal life

Cook is gay.^[10] He has three children.^[11]

Selected publications

• London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
• A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men Since the Middle Ages (Oxford: Greenwood, 2007); editor and lead author.
• Queer 1950s: Rethinking Sexuality in the Post-War Years (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); co-editor with Heike Bauer.
• Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Sexuality and Urban Life in Post-1945 Europe (London: Continuum, 2014); co-editor with Jennifer Evans.
• Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth-Century London (London: Palgrave, 2014).
• Prejudice & Pride: Celebrating LGBTQ Heritage (London: National Trust, 2017); co-author with Alison Oram.
• Queer Beyond London: LGBTQ Stories from Four English Cities (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022); co-author with Alison Oram.