Harold James Perkin (11 November 1926 – 16 October 2004) was a distinguished English social historian who was the founder of the Social History Society in 1976.

Harold Perkin was born in Hanley, Staffordshire, on 11 November 1926 as the eldest child of five in the working class family of Robert James Perkin, a builder, and his wife Hilda May Dillon. He attended Hanley High School and won a scholarship to Jesus College, Cambridge, from 1945, gaining a starred First Class degree in 1948. At Cambridge, he was involved in amateur dramatics, and was a member of the cast of La Vie Cambridgienne, the first Cambridge Footlights revue to be televised by the BBC. After National Service in the RAF, he was rejected by his Cambridge college to study for a PhD on the basis that his abilities, "though considerable", did not lie in the direction of academic research. He began extramural history teaching from 1950 with the University of Manchester.

Perkin was a lecturer in social history at the University of Manchester (1951–1965), then a Senior Lecturer (1965–1967), a Professor (1967–1984) in social history and Director of the centre for social history (1974–84) at the University of Lancaster, and an Emeritus Professor of History at Northwestern University, Illinois (1985–1997). In addition, he held a visiting professorship at Rice University and founded the Social History Society. Perkin was Chairman (1976–1991), and served as chief salary negotiator for the Association of University Teachers, of which he was later President. He was a distinguished, pioneering social historian, whose interests included transport.

Television shows for Granada TV

Both were later issued in book form.