Referee and consultant for Oxford University Press (Oxford and New York), Cambridge University Press, Weidenfeld, Harvard University Press, Macmillan, Yale University Press, Berg, Harper-Collins, I.B. Tauris, Penguin, Boxtree Books, Unwin Hyman, Blackwell, Polity Press, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Rowohlt Verlag, etc..
Referee for research project proposals for SSRC/ESRC, Wellcome Trust, National Endowment for the Humanities (USA), British Academy, Humanities Research Board, Israel Science Foundation, Leverhulme Trust, and University of Manchester research fund. As a member of the Standing Committee of the Modern History Section of the British Academy I refereed all applications in the field for postdoctoral research fellowships, research leave, and similar schemes, as well as recommendations for the British Academy Book Prize (successful in 2001), and as Chairman of Section H10, I co-ordinated the views of the Standing Committee in these areas. More recently I have refereed applications for a range of British Academy grants, postdoctoral, mid-career and senior.
Ihave acted as External Assessor for Chairs in Universities of Kent, Strathclyde and London. I have acted frequently as an invited and independent assessor for tenure and full professorship applications in American and Australian universities and for readerships and personal chairs in British universities, as well as for Research Fellowships in Cambridge. I am regularly consulted by Search Committees for major chairs in the USA. I was a member of the Evaluation Commission of the Leibniz-Gemeinschaft for the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich in 2008. I wrote a frank and confidential appraisal of the candidates for the Chair of Modern History at Newcastle University in 2019, leading in the end to the appointment of Daniel Siemens.