Lucy Caroline Noakes FRHistS (born 1964) is a British historian.
Since 2017, she has been Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex.
[1] Noakes has said that she became interested in history through left-wing politics; she was inspired by E. P. Thompson's speeches at CND rallies and by his book The Making of the English Working Class to uncover the lives of ordinary people, especially women (owing to the influence of feminist historians like Sheila Rowbotham).
She completed a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree at the University of Sussex and stayed there to complete a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree,[2] which was awarded in 1996 for her thesis Gender and British National Identity in Wartime: A Study of the Links Between Gender and National Identity in Britain in the Second World War, the Falklands War, and the Gulf War.
[2][4] In 2017, Noakes was appointed Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex.