Dr Jose Bellido elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

In May 2026, Dr Jose Bellido was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS), in recognition of his contributions to historical scholarship. The Royal Historical Society, based at University College London, is one of the UK’s most prestigious learned societies for history. It advocates for historians and the value of history, fosters connections across historical communities, and supports historical enquiry through funding and publishing.

His monograph, Adventures in Childhood: Intellectual Property, Imagination and the Business of Play (Cambridge University Press, 2022), co-authored with Kathy Bowrey, has been widely recognised for its originality and interdisciplinary contribution to understanding intellectual property, culture, and consumption (Modern Law Review 2024: 1384-1388; Intellectual Property Forum 2023: 62-65). The book examined the rise of merchandising during the twentieth century. It has been described by reviewers as “a profoundly original book that combines exquisite archival work and acute social insight”, “[a book] that quite radically changes our understanding of how intellectual property function, and to what effect” and “a captivating story of how law, media and culture has interacted to construct the subjectivities of child, family, consumer”.

He has also edited and co-edited various influential volumes in the field, including one that brought together the world’s leading experts on intellectual property history: Landmark Cases in Intellectual Property Law (Bloomsbury, 2017) and the first book on the links between intellectual property law and nature: Intellectual Property and the Design of Nature (Oxford University Press, 2023) [co-edited with Brad Sherman]. This volume represented a pioneering contribution to the study of this relationship, highlighting the central position that nature occupies across the discipline, and was shortlisted as the best book on design of the year in IPkat.