Saturday November 24th

Memory as historical material -

Liz Leicester, Birkbeck and Ruskin Colleges

I will explore the relationship of memory to the past through looking at a little-known strike of 30,000 mainly women clothing workers which took place in Leeds in 1970. I will consider how public history and its focus on unconventional sources can add a new dimension to labour history using ‘Leeds United’, a film made in 1974, as an illustration of this point. I will consider how memory changes as our experience in the present impacts on the remembered past.

Saturday January 26th

Living in Victorian London: a material history of everyday life

Alastair Owens and Karen Wehner

Queen Mary, University of London

Nigel Jeffries and Rupert Featherby

Museum of London Archaeology Service

This presentation will outline an on-going AHRC-funded project which is seeking to gain a deeper understanding of the social complexity and geographical diversity of metropolitan lives in the mid-nineteenth century through a study of the material culture of everyday domestic life. Using an 'ethnographies of place' approach the project combines analysis of archaeological materials with intensive investigation of documentary sources, in an attempt to build up an understanding of the experience everyday urban domestic life from the ‘inside out’.

March 15th

Remembering the Women's Freedom League: suffragette memories and public history.

Mandy Richards

In the militant women’s suffrage campaign, the Pankhursts and their Women’s Social and Political Union are well known, but fewer people have heard of the role of the Women’s Freedom League. Could the ways in which League members remembered and celebrated the campaign help explain why they have been ‘hidden from history’?

All welcome. Sessions which take place in Elvin room, Ruskin college, Walton Street, Oxford 0X1 2HE begin promptly at 11 - preceded by coffee from 10.30- & finish by lunchtime. To be added to the mailing list please send email to: edeeley@ruskin.ac.uk