LSRG Seminar on 21 April: Yann Béliard on Labour and Decolonisation

On Tuesday, 22 April, the Labour and Society Research Group - a research forum that brings together Northumbria's 'Histories of Activism' staff and colleagues from Newcastle University - will hold its next event. We are delighted to welcome Yann Béliard, who lectures in British History at the Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle - Paris III. His paper is entitled 'Labour and Decolonisation: The British Experience'. Back in November 2013, Dr Béliard organised a conference on this subject, and his paper will build on these earlier discussions. For details of the earlier event, including audio files of the papers, please consult the event's website.

Yann Béliard holds a PhD from the Université Paris XIII, where his research dealt with social relations in Hull between 1894 and 1913. His work has appeared in journals such as Labour History Review, the Cahiers d'Histoire and the Revue Francaise de Civilisation Britannique as well as various edited collections. In 2014, he edited a themed Labour History Review issue on 'The Great Labour Unrest'. He is currently preparing a volume in French on the British labour movement before 1914.


The  talk will start at 5:00 pm and take place in room 2.20 of the Research Beehive (Old Library Building) at Newcastle University. A campus map can be accessed via this link.

Commemorating the centenary of the Women's Peace Congress of 1915

On Monday, 20 April, the Histories of Activism group is organising an event at the Newcastle Lit & Phil to commemorate the centenary of the Women's Peace Congress of 1915 - a major international meeting held at The Hague. Over 1,200 women came together to coordinate their efforts to bring an end to the Great War. Following on from their meeting in the Netherlands, participants travelled to European capitals to lobby the representatives of the warring nations.  The event also resulted in the creation of the International Committee of Women for a Permanent Peace, which was later transformed into the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) - a major pacifist organisation that still exists today.

A century on, our 'Women as Peacemakers' evening will allow us to reflect on the history, legacy and ongoing relevance of the women's peace movement. The event is open to the public and will start at 6:00 pm.

• Daniel Laqua (Senior Lecturer in European History at Northumbria University) will introduce the event by commenting on the history of peace movement up to 1914 as well as outlining the main features of the congress at The Hague.
• Sarah Hellawell (PhD candidate in British History at Northumbria University) will present findings from her doctoral research. She will focus on the British women who attended the congress as well as the subsequent creation of a British WILPF section. She will show how the British women's movement emerged from a section of the pre-war suffrage movement, and will also consider the tension between national loyalty to the British war effort and women's transnational efforts for peace.
• Ingrid Sharp (Senior Lecturer in German at Leeds University) will discuss the aims and achievements of the women at The Hague, explaining why it is important to remember them. In doing so, she will draw attention to the legacy and significance of this year's centenary, shedding light on the relationship between peace, women's rights and human rights.
• Jon Coburn (PhD candidate in US History at Northumbria University) will draw on his doctoral research on women's activism for peace in 1960s/1970s America. He will point out that women's groups have had a long and positive role to play in the American peace movement. He will highlight the connections between different waves of activism and demonstrate the enduring relevance of women's peace history for contemporary peace groups.

Participation in the event is free. There is no need to pre-register, but if you would like to let us know that you are coming, you can do so via our Facebook page.

Mapping Tyneside Radicalism

The 'Histories of Activism' group is currently putting together a website that maps moments of radical activity that have occurred on Tyneside since the seventeenth century. The project was inspired by our belief that Tyneside’s rich and diverse radical history is only fitfully commemorated in the urban fabric of Newcastle and Gateshead. Mapping Tyneside Radicalism is designed to create a space where academics, researchers and local communities can work together to build a permanent memorial to the region’s tradition of radicalism and activism. 

This interactive website has gathered an archive of historic activism, and it allows users to map this archive on to the modern Tyneside landscape. In preparing this resource, we have drawn on the diverse expertise of the staff members and PhD students who are members of our research group. Every event on the site will come with a short commentary and links to further readings. We therefore hope that this resource will be of considerable use to students, schoolchildren, researchers and many others. The website is currently being developed by the CommunityITAcademy and will go live in May 2015.

We are encouraging members of the public to engage with us in a dialogue about the different dimensions of Tyneside radicalism. If you have an event that you think should be commemorated on this website, then please get in touch with the project coordinator, Dr Joe Hardwick.

LSRG Seminar on 8 December: Laura O'Brien on 1848

The Labour and Society Research Group (LSRG) is a research forum jointly run by academics from Newcastle University and Northumbria University's Histories of Activism group. 

We are delighted to announce our next event: on Monday 08 December, Laura O’Brien from Sunderland University will present her work. Dr O'Brien is a specialist in French history whose work has shed light on republican identity in nineteenth-century France. Her book The Republican Line: Caricature and French Republican Identity, 1830-1852 is under contract with Manchester University Press.

On Monday, she will discuss 'Histories as Activism: Writing the History of the 1848 Revolution in France’.  The seminar will take place at 5:00 pm in room 035 of Northumbria University’s Lipman Building. We hope to see many of you there!

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.