Amber Ward is a tutor in Modern History at the University of St Andrews. Her research considers how deindustrialization intersected with broader cultural changes in popular ideas, values, and social life. Her PhD, completed at St Andrews in 2024, considered changing subjectivities during deindustrialization in Central Fife, Scotland between the 1930s and 1990s. Her PhD was fully funded by an AHRC (SGSAH) doctoral research council award. In 2022 she spent a semester as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research has appeared in Oral History and the Scottish Left Review. 

Project Statement:

Cultural Histories of Deindustrialization

My research de-centers employment in its analysis of community change over time. I conduct unstructured oral history interviews, usually with community organizations from a range of backgrounds. I’m interested in applying alternative methodologies to understand the period of deindustrialization, especially post-structuralist, Marxist feminist, and decolonising lenses.