Staff profile

Jennifer Luff will be on research leave for the academic year 2022-2023.

Jennifer Luff is a historian of politics and labour in the US and the UK, with special interests in the history of working-class conservatism, transnational working-class politics, civil liberties and state repression, and political organizing.

Her current research investigates Britain's secret programme to bar Communists from the interwar civil service. From 1927 through World War II, the British government operated a large-scale initiative to identify suspected Communists and prevent their employment or effect their dismissal from government dockyards, ordnance factories, and scientific establishments. More information about this project can be found in her article "Covert and Overt Operations: Interwar Political Policing in the United States and the United Kingdom" (2017).

Her 2012 book Commonsense Anticommunism explored American labour anticommunism, civil liberties, and working-class conservatism in the interwar period. She has also published on workplace theft and the history of American detectives. She has held research fellowships at New York University, University of California, Los Angeles, and the Newberry Library. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

• Modern British history
• Comparative state development
• Communism and anticommunism
• Modern US history

• Britain and Continental Europe
• Economic and Social History
• Modern
• North America
• Political Cultures
• Transnational History

• Britain’s secret red purge: the interwar bar on Communists in the civil service

Authored book

• Luff, Jennifer. (2012). Commonsense Anticommunism: Labor and Civil Liberties between the World Wars. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Chapter in book

• Luff, Jennifer (2013). New Men of Power: Jack Tenney, Ronald Reagan, and Postwar Labor Anticommunism. In De-Centering Cold War History: Local and Global Change. Pieper Mooney, Jadwiga E. & Lanza, Fabio Routledge. 99-122.

Edited book

• Luce, Stephanie, Luff, Jennifer, McCartin, Joseph & Milkman, Ruth (2014). What Works for Workers? Public Policies and Innovative Strategies for Low-Wage Workers. Russell Sage Press.

Journal Article

• Luff, Jennifer (2020). The Anxiety of Influence: Foreign Intervention, U.S. Politics, and World War I. Diplomatic History 44(5): 756-785.
• Bell, Jonathan, Geidel, Molly,, Goodall, Alex,, Luff, Jennifer, & Phelps, Christopher (2019). Roundtable: Antecedents of 2019. Journal of American Studies 53(4): 855-892.
• Luff, Jennifer (2018). Labor Anticommunism in the United States of America and the United Kingdom, 1920–49. Journal of Contemporary History 53(1): 109-133.
• Luff, Jennifer (2017). Covert and Overt Operations: Interwar Political Policing in the United States and the United Kingdom. American Historical Review 122(3): 727-757.
• Luff, Jennifer (2013). 'Rethinking Interwar Conservatism, Communism, and Repression', and 'Response'. Journal of the Historical Society 13(2): 101-114 and 157-162.
• Luff, Jennifer. (2013). Featherbedding, fabricating and the failure of authority on 'The Wire'. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 10(1): 21-27.
• Luff, Jennifer (2011). Historical Contributors versus Structural Tendencies. Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas 8(2): 77-82.
• Luff, Jennifer. (2008). Surrogate Supervisors: Railway Spotters and the Origins of Workplace Surveillance. Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas 5(1): 47-74.
• Luebke, Sam & Luff, Jennifer (2003). Contemporary Affairs: Organizing: a secret history. Labor History 44(4): 421-432.

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Luff, Jennifer (2013). Justice for Janitors: A digital history.