About
A brief description of who you are and what you do.
This section will only display on your public profile if you’ve added content.
You can update this in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading and then ‘Curriculum and research description’, select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select - ‘About’.
Write about yourself in the third person. Aim for 100 to 150 words covering the main points about who you are and what you currently do. Clear, simple language is best. You can include specialist or technical terms.
You’ll be able to add details about your research, publications, career and academic history to other sections of your staff profile.
Research
Research interests
- History of 20th century science, especially scientific cosmology
- Space history
- History of technology, especially communication technology
- American religious history, especially history of evangelicalism
- The Vietnam war
Current research
The history of scientific cosmology, especially in the twentieth-century United States
You can update the information for this section in Pure (opens in a new tab).
Research groups
Any research groups you belong to will automatically appear on your profile. Speak to your line manager if these are incorrect. Please do not raise a ticket in Ask HR.
Research interests
Add up to 5 research interests. The first 3 will appear in your staff profile next to your name. The full list will appear on your research page. Keep these brief and focus on the keywords people may use when searching for your work. Use a different line for each one.
In Pure (opens in a new tab), select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading 'Curriculum and research description', select 'Add profile information'. In the dropdown menu, select 'Research interests: use separate lines'.
Current research
Update this in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’ and then ‘Curriculum and research description - Current research’.
Describe your current research in 100 to 200 words. Write in the third person. Include broad key terms to help people discover your work, for example, “sustainability” or “fashion textiles”.
Research projects
Research Council funded projects will automatically appear here. The active project name is taken from the finance system.
Publications
Public outputs that list you as an author will appear here, once they’re validated by the ePrints Team. If you’re missing any outputs that you’ve added to Pure, they may be waiting for validation.
Supervision
Current PhD Students
Contact your Faculty Operating Service team to update PhD students you supervise and any you’ve previously supervised. Making this information available will help potential PhD applicants to find you.
Teaching
I teach undergraduate modules on US history in the 20th century, including modules on McCarthyism, the Space Age, and America in the World: Conflict, Technology and the Lives of Others since 1945. I also teach a MA module which focuses on conspiracies, cults and paranoia in American history. I am closely involved in the development of the MA Global Challenges programme, to be delivered from September 2024.
You can update your teaching description in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading and then ‘Curriculum and research description’ , select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select – ‘Teaching Interests’. Describe your teaching interests and your current responsibilities. Aim for 200 words maximum.
Courses and modules
Contact the Curriculum and Quality Assurance (CQA) team for your faculty to update this section.
External roles and responsibilities
These are the public-facing activities you’d like people to know about.
This section will only display on your public profile if you’ve added content.
You can update your external roles and responsibilities in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘+ Add content’ and then ‘Activity’, your ‘Personal’ tab and then ‘Activities’. Choose which activities you want to show on your public profile.
You can hide activities from your public profile. Set the visibility as 'Backend' to only show this information within Pure, or 'Confidential' to make it visible only to you.
Biography
Kendrick Oliver teaches and researches the history of the United States in the mid-twentieth century. In particular, he is interested in exploring modern American political, social and cultural responses to some of the larger questions of human existence. This theme links his doctoral work on nuclear diplomacy with subsequent studies of memory and catastrophe, wartime atrocities, crime and punishment, religion, technology and space exploration, and with his current research into the social and cultural history of scientific cosmology in the United States.
He has written three books, including The My Lai Massacre in American History and Memory and To Touch the Face of God: the Sacred, the Profane and the American Space Program, 1957-75.
His current book project explores the social and cultural history of the ‘big bang' theory of the universe's origins. This project has received generous financial support from the American Philosophical Society, the American Institute of Physics and the Dibner History of Science Program at the Huntington Library.
In the mid-2000s, Professor Oliver helped to found Historians of the Twentieth Century United States and served as the organization’s chair between 2017 and 2020. He served as Head of the Department of History at Southampton from 2018 to 2022.
You can update your biography section in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select your ‘Personal’ tab then ‘Edit profile’. Under the heading, and ‘Curriculum and research description’, select ‘Add profile information’. In the dropdown menu, select - ‘Biography’. Aim for no more than 400 words.
This section will only appear if you enter the information into Pure (opens in a new tab).
Prizes
You can update this section in Pure (opens in a new tab). Select ‘+Add content’ and then ‘Prize’. using the ‘Prizes’ section.
You can choose to hide prizes from your public profile. Set the visibility as ‘Backend’ to only show this information within Pure, or ‘Confidential’ to make it visible only to you.