Dr Lindsay Aqui was an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy (2019–2020). Prior to joining POLIS in 2018, she completed a PhD in history and politics at Queen Mary University of London. Her thesis explored the UK’s relationship with the European Community in the period from British accession on 1 January 1973 to the referendum on 5 June 1975. Before starting her doctorate, Lindsay was a civil servant in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills.
Research Interests
Lindsay’s research focuses on modern British politics and international history, with a particular emphasis on UK-EU relations. She is interested in the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy; post-1945 international history; the Cold War; and existential risks.
She is currently working on two projects, funded by the ESRC. The first is a book project, published by Manchester University Press under the title The First Referendum: Reassessing Britain’s Entry to Europe, 1973–75. It studies the UK’s early experiences of EC membership under the government of Edward Heath, the renegotiation conducted by Harold Wilson’s government, and the 1975 referendum which ultimately confirmed the UK’s membership of the EC by a majority of 67 per cent.
The second project explores the notion of an existential risk and the ways that the modern state plans in order face this kind of threat. It draws on examples ranging from Irish independence in the 1920s through to the ongoing preparations for sea level rise in the Caribbean in order to address questions about the nature of state planning and government perceptions of risk and threat.
Key Publications
Lindsay Aqui, The First Referendum: Reassessing Britain’s Entry to Europe, 1973–75 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020). Link: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526145192/
Lindsay Aqui, Michael Kenny and Nick Pearce, ‘’The Empire of England’: Enoch Powell, Sovereignty and the Constitution of the Nation’, Twentieth Century British History (2020). DOI: doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaa022
Lindsay Aqui, ‘Government Policy and Propaganda in the 1975 Referendum on European Community Membership’, Contemporary British History 34:1 (2020): pp. 1–21. DOI: doi.org/10.1080/13619462.2019.1588115
Lindsay Aqui, Contingency Planning: The 1975 and 2016 Referendums, Bennett Institute Research Report, jointly published with UK in a Changing Europe, March 2019. Link: https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/publications/contingency-planning-1975-and-2016-referendums/
Lindsay Aqui, ‘Macmillan, Nkrumah and the 1961 Application for European Economic Community Membership’, The International History Review 39:4 (2017): pp. 575–591. DOI: doi.org/1080/07075332.2016.1245675
