History Workshop Podcast

How can black feminism lead to our collective liberation? Today we hear from the Black feminist writers, thinkers and activists Stella Dadzie and Chardine Taylor Stone, who join Rosa Campbell to discuss internationalism, the importance of collectivity, the role history might play in achieving justice and hope in difficult times. Listen now on Soundcloud - Apple Podcasts - Spotify - Stitcher - or w...

How has the writing of Black British histories functioned as both a form of historical analysis and a voice of radical oppositional politics? Caroline Bressey, Meleisa Ono-George, and Sadiah Qureshi discuss with Marybeth Hamilton in this episode of the History Workshop podcast.

How can the power and invention of Forum Theatre inform radical histories of oppressed groups, such as the homeless? To mark World Homelessness Day on 10 October, Peter Jones speaks with Adrian Jackson, founder of Cardboard Citizens, a theatre company working with homeless people, on the latest episode of the History Workshop Podcast.

What are we doing when we research and tell stories of families, whether other peoples' families or our own? Julia Laite and guests discuss in this episode of the History Workshop Podcast.

What are transnational solidarities and how do they expand our understanding of interactions beyond the nation state? Do they offer a way to understand how actors beyond the West engage with and shape global transformations? Lydia Walker and Su Lin Lewis discuss with Ria Kapoor in this episode of the History Workshop Podcast.

Hazel Carby’s book Imperial Intimacies: a Tale of Two Islands uses the lens of her own family history to make a deep dive into the workings of patriarchal, racialized, and gendered power. She draws on that book for this year’s Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture, titled "Imperial Sexual Economies." Her lecture forms this episode of the History Workshop Podcast.

In 1910, a sixteen year old New Zealander named Lydia Harvey boarded a steamship bound for Buenos Aires in the company of a husband and wife who promised her a life of glamor and ease. What resulted was a journey into the world of commercial sex that took her from South America to London, where she turned the tables on her traffickers and became a star witness in their criminal trial. Up until now...

How can we write the history of AIDS activism so that all stories are equally important? In this episode of the History Workshop podcast, Sarah Schulman discusses how she navigated that challenge in her new book Let The Record Show: a Political History of ACT-UP New York.

How can historians best document, preserve, and make accessible the voices and artifacts of refugee and migration experience? What kinds of materials would such a collection involve? How can archives respond, ethically and practically, to the challenge of conserving materials from under-represented communities whose lives remain so politicized and whose experiences raise such thorny issues of nati...

How do we write the history of women’s lives when history itself has hidden them? In this International Women’s Day episode of the History Workshop Podcast, Christopher Kissane speaks to the Irish poet and writer Doireann ní Ghríofa about her book 'A Ghost in the Throat', winner of the An Post Irish National Book of the Year and the Foyle’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year. The book weaves together th...

In this episode on queer education, Elly Robson is joined by Syeda Ali and Nazmia Jamal to discuss how queer lives can be integrated into school curricula and cultures. The history of queer education in the UK has often been one of deliberate silence: a silence that was officially legislated between 1988 and 2003 by Section 28, which made it illegal for schools to 'promote homosexuality'. We explo...

In episode three of our four-part series on Queer Activisms, Laura Forster is joined by Ajamu X and E-J Scott to discuss public history, the queer archive, and what it means to queer the museum. Listen now to the conversation on the History Workshop Podcast.

In this four-part podcast series on Queer Activisms, historians, performers, educators and activists take a deep dive into existence and resistance in queer life – past and present. In our second episode, Marybeth Hamilton is joined by Matt Cook and Debra Levine to discuss AIDS, queer activism, and the politics of loss and grief.

In this four-part series on Queer Activisms, historians, performers, educators and activists take a deep dive into existence and resistance in queer life - past and present.  In this episode on Queer Joy, Laura Forster is joined by Shay Shay, Tim Other and Dr Fiona Anderson. Together, these artists, activists and historians talk about performance and community, and how they relate to about precari...

Are we living in an Age of Walls? Talk of walls is of course all around us, from heated political rhetoric about building a wall on America’s southernmost border to more amorphous references to the walls of our psyches or firewalls blocking the flow of digital data. In this episode of the History Workshop podcast, HWO's Laura Forster talks to historian Paul Betts, author of Within Walls: Private L...

Dan Chatterton: a London walking tour by History Workshop

How might museum exhibitions convey the complex dynamics of black British history? In this episode of the History Workshop Podcast, co-curators Melissa Bennett (Museum of London) and Iyamide Thomas (Historical Researcher for The Krios Dot Com) discuss their work on "The Krios of Sierra Leone," a new display at the Museum of London Docklands that tells the story of Sierra Leone’s Krio people. In th...

How might historical research into past abuse serve the ends of restorative justice? What kinds of challenges do historians face in gathering testimonies of traumatic experience? Katherine O’Donnell and Claire McGettrick are scholars, activists, and members of Justice for Magdalenes Research, an organization dedicated to unearthing the histories of the women and girls who passed through Ireland’s...

Can the migrant detention centres employed by the Trump administration on the US/Mexico border be legitimately labelled “concentration camps”? What is a concentration camp? In what circumstances are the use of the phrase legitimate, and when does it obscure more than it reveals? Historian Dan Stone explores those questions in this episode of the History Workshop podcast. Subscribe and listen now o...

How was our understanding of sexuality in history transformed by the liberation movements of the late twentieth century and by the challenge of the AIDS epidemic? The historian and activist Jeffrey Weeks explores those questions in the latest episode of the History Workshop podcast. Subscribe and listen now on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher.

What is the role of populism in shaping resistance to Trump and Trumpism? Who are the new progressive leaders emerging from the American grassroots, and what are their historical antecedents? D D Guttenplan - who covered the 2016 presidential election for The Nation - explores these questions in the latest episode of the History Workshop Podcast. Subscribe and listen now on SoundCloud, Apple Podca...

How was violence essential to sustaining the British Empire, and why is teaching this imperative in today's world? Historian Kim Wagner, author of Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre, discusses this question in conversation with Aditya Ramesh on the latest episode History Workshop Podcast. Subscribe and listen now on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, and Stitcher. For more info...

Imperial soldiers played a significant and increasingly well acknowledged part in the Second World War, but what about the women of the British empire? What stories might global and feminist histories of the Second World War reveal? Listen to Professor Yasmin Khan deliver the Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture 2019, "Women On The Frontline Of Empire: a feminist history of the Second World War". For e...

It’s 200 years since the Peterloo Massacre, in which peaceful protesters for democratic reform in Manchester were attacked by cavalry, with 18 killed and over 600 injured. Ballads were crucial tools in the reporting and commemoration of Peterloo, cementing its place in working-class and radical history. In this episode, we hear Kate Gibson talk to ballad experts - Dr Alison Morgan, Brian Peters an...

As students take to the streets to demand action on climate change, listen to activists and historians discuss solutions to environmental crisis at both global and local levels. This conversation took place in April 2018 as part of History Acts, a forum encouraging the exchange of ideas and experiences between radical historians and contemporary activists. For more information about History Acts,...