History Workshop Podcast

A new collection of Raphael Samuel's essays illuminates 19th century Britain and the politics of "people's history".

What does the accidental death of an anarchist in London in 1894 tell us about forgotten histories of direct action?

What can two different stories of postcolonial archival practices tell us about memory, history-making, and decolonisation?

What can a single image of a lone female protestor tell us about the "Battle of Grosvenor Square" in 1968?

What can we learn from a 45-year-old Swedish manifesto that helped inspire the movement for workers' history?

The political climate greeting refugees to the UK is no longer simply hostile - it is expulsive. David Herd explores.

What lessons might the past hold for migrants seeking childcare in the UK but having No Recourse to Public Funds?

Who do you think of when you hear the phrase “revolutionary women”? If you cast your mind back to the movers and shakers of the revolutions that marked the 20th century, what women’s names come to mind? Sorcha Thomson and others discuss their book She Who Struggles: Revolutionary Women Who Shaped the World.

Histories of gay men, lesbians, queer and trans people often focus on the heroic. But what about the gay characters whose impact on history was far more ambiguous, or complicated, or out-and-out bad? Ben Miller and Huw Lemmey, hosts of the Bad Gays podcast and authors of Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, discuss what those complicated lives can tell us about the dynamics of queer history and the for...

What do we mean, in post-Brexit Britain, when we talk about "ordinary working-class places"? Valerie Wright, Ewan Gibbs, and Diarmaid Kelliher explore.

In September 2022, a group of public historians from outside and inside the academy met at London’s Birkbeck College in the heart of Bloomsbury to ask ‘What is public history now?’ In this special edition of the History Workshop Podcast, we explore the politics, the perils, and the possibilities of doing history in public.

What happens to narratives of British labour history when we incorporate stories of women? Laura Schwartz and George Stevenson explore.

To mark International Workers Day, we explore three forgotten moments in British history that spotlight the intertwined histories of labour and race.

Sixty years after breaking into a government bunker to expose secret state planning for nuclear conflict, Nic Ralph speaks for the first time about an extraordinary piece of direct action that genuinely worked.

What does it mean to write "intimate histories" of economic life? How might a focus on "the intimate" transform the way historians perceive and describe the economic past? Six scholars address those questions in this episode of the History Workshop podcast.

How can historians meaningfully and ethically research past experiences of sexual violence? What tools do they need to uncover a subject so intensely emotive and yet often accessible only through sources employing the dry legal or clinical language of institutions and bureaucracies? Ruth Beecher and Rhian Keyse discuss in conversation with Marybeth Hamilton in this episode of the History Workshop...

How might we understand the origins and the impact of current controversies raging in Britain over changing interpretations of British colonial history? How can those working on British colonial history intervene effectively in often fraught public debates? Corinne Fowler reflects on those questions in her June 2022 Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture.

Since the twentieth century, and perhaps even dating back further, the phrase 'black internationalism' has served as shorthand for a range of debates about Pan-Africanism and connections between various parts of the African Diaspora. The phrase has also been linked to other connected topics such as anti-Black racism, Black political activism, western colonisation of Africa and the Caribbean, anti-...

The struggle for women's right to vote is often thought to have been waged on a national level. But how was this movement transnational? In what ways was international travel important to women's agitation for the vote? How did women move between nations and inspire and challenge each other? If they stayed local, what helped them to feel part of an international community? Historians James Keating...

What is the history of activism against sexual violence? What kinds of strategies have survivors employed to combat it and to counter the stigma that has too often surrounded it? What kinds of narratives of resistance and protest have historically been given priority – and what voices have been left out? Today's guests are committed to examining those questions through their involvement with an in...

How has the concept of "useful knowledge" shaped the two-hundred year history of Birkbeck College London - and workers education more generally? Joanna Bourke, Jonny Matfin, and Ciaran O'Donohue discuss with Marybeth Hamilton in this episode of the History Workshop podcast.

How can the stories of families illuminate the histories of migrations? Julia Laite and guests discuss in this episode of the History Workshop Podcast.

In this episode of the History Workshop Podcast, Elly Robson is in conversation with Professor Vinita Damodaran and Professor Harriet Ritvo to look at the ways that we know nature and how these have been political, in the past and today. Together, they discuss the rise of scientific expertise, its entanglement in projects of empire, and how it has interacted with indigenous and local knowledge. We...

Ridley Road has recently gained attention as the subject of a new BBC drama about the revival of fascism in 1960s London and the anti-fascist action taken by the Jewish community in East London. Ridley Road Market has been around for almost 140 years and has been described as a “hub of connection, interconnections and social interaction”. Historically and today, the market is run by and for divers...

Sheila Rowbotham is a writer, an historian, an activist, and an internationally renowned socialist feminist. In 1970 she participated in the first British Women’s Liberation Conference at Ruskin College Oxford, and two years later she published Women, Resistance, and Revolution, a pathbreaking analysis of women’s participation in radical upheavals that was immediately translated into multiple lang...