Hillman worked for Conservative MPDavid Willetts, first as a Senior Research Officer from 2000 to 2003.[4] Hillman stood for the Conservatives in the2002 local elections in Hammersmith Broadway Ward, coming sixth in a three-seat election with 528 votes.[6]
He worked on pensions policy for theAssociation of British Insurers from 2003 to 2007, before returning to politics.[4] From 2007 to 2010, Hillman served as Willetts' chief of staff.[2] He was the Conservative parliamentary candidate forCambridge in 2010, selected from six candidates in anopen primary in December 2009 after Richard Normington stepped down as candidate.[7][8][9] A fundraising dinner was supported byClarissa Dickson-Wright.[10] He represented himself as a "liberal Tory", butThe Independent reported he was "not getting much help from the party's big guns".[11] Hillman came second behind the Liberal DemocratJulian Huppert with 12,829 votes.[12]
Since January 2014 he has been the director of athink tank, the Higher Education Policy Institute in Oxford.[13][2] Since 2016 he has been on the board of governors of his alma mater, the University of Manchester,[15] and he became a fellow of another alma mater, Queen Mary University of London, in 2016.[16] From 2015 to 2018 he was a school governor at Haddenham St Mary's.[17] He has been a trustee of theNational Foundation for Educational Research since April 2018[4][18] and he is a member of the Higher Education Policy Development Group at theBritish Academy.[19] He was previously a research fellow withPolicy Exchange.[20]
Hillman grew up in Banbury. He met his wife while they were undergraduates[20] and they married in Cambridge.[21] While a teacher in London he lived in Covent Garden.[20] They have children[2] and live inHaddenham, Buckingham.[22][23]
Nicholas Hillman, "Public schools and the Fleming report of 1944: shunting the first-class carriage on to an immense siding?." History of Education 41#2 (2012): 235–255.
Hillman, Nicholas (February 2008). "A 'chorus of execration'? Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' forty years on".Patterns of Prejudice.42 (1):83–104.doi:10.1080/00313220701805927.S2CID143681971.
Hillman, Nicholas (2013). "From Grants for All to Loans for All: Undergraduate Finance from the Implementation of the Anderson Report (1962) to the Implementation of the Browne Report (2012)".Contemporary British History.27 (3):249–270.doi:10.1080/13619462.2013.783418.S2CID154321565.
Hillman, Nicholas (2001). "'Tell me chum, in case I got it wrong. What was it we were fighting during the war?' The Re-emergence of British Fascism, 1945-58".Contemporary British History.15 (4):1–34.doi:10.1080/713999428.S2CID143994809.
