Activism and Integrity

Over the past year members of the Histories of Activism group have worked alongside members of the Integrity Project at the Universities of York and Durham to host a series of events which explore the relationship between activism, reform and integrity. Two events have so far been held:

Activism and Integrity. Workshop at Northumbria University, 16 December 2013

This workshop, which was run in conjunction with the Integrity Project (but which was fully funded by the Histories of Activism group), explored the ways in which concepts of integrity have shaped debates among activists from across the political spectrum; how it has governed action as well as intention; and how forms of organization and collective action are negotiated to preserve the integrity of the actors. Two guest speakers – James Gregory of the University of Plymouth and Mark Pitchford of KCL – and two internal speakers – Charlotte Alston and Joe Street – delivered papers at the event. Podcasts of some of the papers can be found on the Project website.

Integrity Lost/Integrity Regained: Social Conditions and Institutional Pressures. Two-Day Conference held at the Literary and Philosophical Society, Newcastle, 11-12 April 2014

For this conference, Joe Hardwick organised a panel, entitled ‘Integrity and the Reform of Public Life in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic World’, which considered the ways in which discourses of integrity informed debates about the reform of institutions and public life during the transatlantic ‘age of reform’ of the early nineteenth century. The speakers were Heath Bowen (St. Thomas Aquinas College, New York), James Gregory (Plymouth) and Aashish Velkar (Manchester). Details on the event – which featured three research papers and an introduction – can be found here.

Joe Hardwick and James Gregory are currently developing this panel into an edited collection, entitled Cultures of Integrity, c. 1775-1851. The call for papers for the edited collection will be disseminated shortly.