Event and Exhibition on Students and Activism after the First World War

On Saturday, 7 October, the Lit & Phil in Newcastle upon Tyne was the site of talks and an exhibition on 'Impacts of the First World War on Adult and Higher Education: The North East, the  UK and the Making of Post-War Europe'. The event formed part of the project 'British Ex-Service Students and the Rebuilding of Europe, 1918-1926', which is a collaborative venture, involving academics from Northumbria University and the UCL Institute of Education as well as staff from the National Union of Students (NUS) and the North East branch of the Workers' Educational Association (WEA).

Mike Day (NUS) and Georgina Brewis (UCL) discussing the project's pop-up exhibition.

Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University) speaking to Tomás Irish (Swansea University) before the latter's talk on British universities and the Great War

Sarah Hellawell (Northumbria University) presenting initial project findings on university students in the North East

 Jude Murphy (WEA) on activism within the Workers' Educational Association

Nigel Todd (WEA) on controversies within the Workers' Educational Association, both during and after the First World War

Georgina Brewis (UCL) and Mike Day (NUS) concluding the afternoon's proceedings

Workshop 'Students of the World Unite'

On Wednesday, 3 December, the Histories of Activism is holding a workshop entitled 'Students of the World Unite? Education and Internationalism in the Twentieth Century'. This half-day event will take place in room 206 of Northumbria University's Squires Building. The workshop is divided into two main sessions - one dedicated to various international ventures that students engaged in during the 1920s and 1930s, the other drawing attention to radical activism at school and university in and beyond the 1960s. As a whole, the event encourages reflection on the spaces in which students and educators operated, with a particular emphasis on the way in which the transnational related to the political.


13h30: Introduction

• Daniel Laqua and Nicole Robertson

13h40: Students and internationalism in the interwar years

• Tamson Pietsch (Sydney / Brunel): The Floating University: educational travel and international politics, 1926-27
• Daniel Laqua (Northumbria): A new generation within a new world order: student activism as a form of interwar internationalism
• Georgina Brewis (IOE): Service, self-help and international understanding: the work of European Student Relief / International Student Service between the World Wars
• Chair: Tim Kirk (Newcastle)

15h10: Coffee break

15h30: Radical activism in and beyond the 1960s

• Sarah Webster (Manchester): British students and transnational solidarity in Cold War Britain: activism beyond the NUS
• Sylvia Ellis (Northumbria): Britihs student activism and the international protests against the Vietnam War
• Say Burgin (Leeds): 'We must understand how sexism, racism and imperialism are connected': Boston's free schools and anti-imperialist feminism in the 1970s
• Chair: Martyn Smith (Newcastle) 

17h00 Conclusion

• Brian Ward (Northumbria)

 To register for this event, please contact Daniel Laqua by 30 November. Alternatively, you can register your attendance on Facebook.