“We’re not just living through change, we’re living through the collapse of old certainties. The question ‘How do we keep up?’ feels daunting, maybe it should be: ‘What do we choose to carry forward?’”
About Eliza Filby
Understanding long-term change, and helping others make sense of it.
I’m a historian, author and thinker who studies how work, money, family and identity are being reshaped in the 21st century. My work isn’t about predicting the future rather it’s about helping people recognise the forces quietly rewriting our world and what they mean for the choices we make now.
Growing up in South London, the rhythms of family and place shaped how I think about time, identity and change. My academic training (including a PhD in contemporary history) taught me to look beyond headlines to the deeper patterns beneath them, and to bring clarity to complexity.
I received my PhD from the University of Warwick and in 2015 published my first book, God and Mrs Thatcher; the Battle for Britain’s Soul - which explored the social, economic and political upheaval of late-twentieth-century Britain. My third book, Inheritocracy: It’s Time to Talk about the Bank of Mum and Dad was published in September 2024 and became a Top Ten Sunday Times’ Bestseller.
I started my professional life as an academic, writing and teaching on the political upheavals of the 1980s, wanting to understand a period that shaped my childhood and the lives of my parents. I received my PhD from the University of Warwick and in 2015 published my first book, God and Mrs Thatcher; the Battle for Britain’s Soul - which explored the social, economic and political upheaval of late-twentieth-century Britain. My third book, Inheritocracy: It’s Time to Talk about the Bank of Mum and Dad was published in September 2024 and became a Top Ten Sunday Times’ Bestseller. It recently was
As a lecturer, I taught the history of capitalism to Chinese millennials at the University of Renmin, Beijing, and the history of social democracy to British millennials at King’s College London. I also set up GradTrain, which became one of the leading companies helping graduate training in the UK and am also a visiting lecturer at King's College London.
I was also awarded the Europa Forum's Millennial Leaders Award for my research on generations.
Formal headshots (Zip Folder Download)
‘Time and family are part of the same thing really; the generation is the actual unit of time by which humanity lives.” - James Meek