Belchem served as head of the School of History, dean of the Faculty of Arts and pro-vice chancellor of the University of Liverpool.[5][1] He is presently vice-president of the Society for the Study of Labour History.[6]
Belchem's 1985 work on Henry Hunt made a "major contribution to our understanding" of political strategies of progressive movements in 19th-century Britain.[7]Industrialization and the Working Class (1990) was viewed as a "lucid and wide-ranging survey of recent works on working-class movements and their context."[8]Popular Radicalism in Nineteenth-Century Britain (1996) was reviewed as an "excellent work" and a "valuable guide" to the literature on Chartism and the origins of the Labour Party.[9]Merseypride (2000), a collection of essays on the history of Liverpool, is considered to be a "valuable work...of a consistently high standard."[10] His Irish, Catholic and Scouse (2007) was noted to have made a "vital contribution to the historiography of the Irish in Britain."[11]
Belchem worked on Liverpool's successful bid for UNESCOWorld Heritage Site status in 2004.[12][13] In 2017,[14] he was appointed to the Liverpool mayor's task force, which assisted in efforts that ensured the city's status was not lost when under review by UNESCO in 2018.[15][16][17]
^SSLH. "Society officers". Society for the Study of Labour History. Archived from the original on 28 December 2019. Retrieved 8 November 2019.
^Sykes, Robert (1987). "Review of Orator Hunt, Henry Hunt and English Working-Class Radicalism". Social History. 12 (2): 253–256. ISSN0307-1022. JSTOR4285605.
^Stevenson, John (1994). "Review of Industrialization and the Working Class: The English Experience, 1750-1900". The English Historical Review. 109 (431): 483–484. ISSN0013-8266. JSTOR574128.
^Rule, John (1996). "Review of Popular Radicalism in Nineteenth-Century Britain". The Economic History Review. 49 (4): 840–841. doi:10.2307/2597989. ISSN0013-0117. JSTOR2597989.
"Professor John Belchem biography"(PDF). Beyond Impacts – Lessons and legacies from researching Liverpool’s European Capital of Culture. University of Liverpool. 12 March 2010. p. 2.