In 1970, Howard Zinn asked a question still important for politically-engaged academics today: “what is radical history?” This conference organised at Birbeck University of London on Tuesday, March 24th 2015 aims at exploring the relationship between rigorous historical research and active political engagement. This conference will provide a space to re-engage with this debate, both to ask what we can learn from radical historical practice of the past but also to question what has changed in the intervening decades, and what a radical history might look like now.
Key information
Date: 24th of Marche 2015
Location: Birbeck, University of London - Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
Register to attend at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/15643334635
Programme
Download a PDF of the programme here.
Radical historiographies
David Convery (NUI Galway), ‘What is radical history? Some thoughts based on a comparison of British and Irish historiographical trends’
Amy Tobin (York) and Hannah Proctor (Birkbeck), ‘Looking Back: the Histories of Radical History’
Rob Waters (Queen Mary and Birkbeck), ‘Thinking black: Peter Fryer’s Staying Power (1984)’
Urban and rural workers
Pablo L. Álvarez (King’s College London), ‘Where is my grandmother in the History of Art?’
Duncan Money (Oxford), ‘Who is a radical in history? Problems of definition on the Zambian Copperbelt’
Paul Griffin (Glasgow), ‘Assembling a Working Class Presence: Clydeside’s Usable Pasts’
Political commitment
George Stevenson (Durham), ‘The politics of defeat and the crisis of purpose in history’
Dominic Davies (Oxford), ‘Criticism as Resistance: A Methodology for the Activist-Academic’
Ben Bethell, Barbara Warnock and Guy Beckett (Birkbeck), ‘History Acts’
The state and authority
Michael Weatherburn (Imperial), ‘Writing the managerial revolution back in: the rise of big management in Britain, 1916-2015′
Ben Taylor (King’s College London), ‘TechnoCops and Radical Scientists: Towards a Radical History of a British Surveillance State?’
Jacob Ramsay Smith (Queen Mary), ‘In search of “complete victory”: Victorian Imperial case studies for the modern “War on Terror”’
Social movements and protest
Miranda Iossifidis (Goldsmiths), ‘The pamphlets of the “We Want to Riot, Not To Work Collective”: the relationship between radical history and political myth’
Garikoitz Gómez Alfaro (Brighton), ‘What time is radical history? A rough guide to critical time’
Rowan Tallis Milligan (Oxford), ‘The politics of the Crowbar: Squatting in London, 1968-1977′
Radical education
Alison Ronan (Independent Researcher), ‘The Riverside Village 1916-1917 and Fairby Grange 1921-1922: two radical and forgotten examples of self-governing colonies for the young “delinquent”.’
Victoria Russell (Birkbeck), ‘Radical Education and the Platonic Androgyne: The Challenge to Socio-Political Hegemony in England between 1790 and 1840.’
Ruth Mather (Queen Mary), ‘Moving Beyond Boundaries: Feminists Teaching History’
The conference will end with a round-table between activist-academics including Dr. Becky Taylor (Birkbeck, History, Classics and Archaeology) and Dr. Robbie Shilliam (QMUL, International Relations), and an audience-participatory discussion. The event will be free to attend. This event is organised as part of the Raphael Samuel History Centre‘s New Historians’ Network. The conference is organised by Luca Lapolla (Birkbeck), Diarmaid Kelliher (Glasgow) and Julie Russell (Exeter). Please send any email enquiries to: radicalhistoryconference@gmail.com
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