The Urban History Group
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urbanhistorygroup.bsky.social
The Urban History Group
@urbanhistorygroup.bsky.social
2.5K followers 130 following 53 posts
https://urbanhistorygroup.wordpress.com/ We organise biennial conferences and occasional talks to promote the study of Urban History in the UK. Established in 1966 and now working with the Pre-Modern Towns Group on our conference in September 2025
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urbanhistorygroup.bsky.social
Setting up for #UHG2025

Thank you @royalhistsoc.org for helping us show we know the value of history @uniofleicester.bsky.social!
Conference programme with Royal Historical Society badges reading ‘I know the value of history’, ‘trust me, I’m a historian’, and ‘this is what a historian looks like’
September 4, 2025 at 10:24 AM
urbanhistorygroup.bsky.social
📣 Book your place for #UHG2025

👉 The Urban Commons: Rights and Citizenship in the City from the Medieval to the Modern

🗓️ 4-5 September
📍 University of Leicester

🔗 www.tickettailor.com/events/urban...
Early twentieth century picture of Leicester's Clock Tower and its surroundings
August 13, 2025 at 10:20 AM
urbanhistorygroup.bsky.social
Papers cover everything from medieval smocks to the London queer scene in the 1990s

#UHGIsBack!
FRIDAY 5TH SEPTEMBER 09.00-10.30 Session 4: Parallel Sessions 4.1: Sex, Sexuality and Queer Spaces (Ken Edwards 526) ‘Mapping Eli Pritchard’s Uncommon Urban Observations, 25 June 1912 - 31 December 1912’ Lucinda Matthews Jones (Liverpool John Moores University) Orientalism, Leisure Culture and Sex work: Cigar divans in Victorian city life Hilde Greefs (University of Antwerp) & Anne Winter (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) Rebels in the City: S/M exclusions in the London queer scene, 1980s-1990s Bethan Downs (University of Birmingham) 4.2: Urban Life Cycles (Ken Edwards 527) Junior Town and City Councils: young people and urban citizenship in postwar Britain Helen Sunderland (University of Oxford) ‘A Happier Old Age’? Architecture, planning and older people in the post-war British city Alistair Fair (University of Edinburgh) School Meal Spaces in post-1945 Britain’. Isabelle Carter (University of Birmingham) 4.3: Spaces, Governance and Everyday Life in Twentieth Century Bombay (Ken Edwards 528) Selling Beef, Setting Boundaries: Meat, faith and governance in colonial Bombay’s marketplaces Mrunmayee Satam (BITS Law School, Mumbai) Bombay on the Eve of the Independence (1946-47): Popular solidarities and cumulating polarisation. Robert Rahman Raman (SRM University, Andhra Pradesh) Life in B.D.D Chawls: Capturing memories and history of spaces Babasaheb Kambale (Satish Pradhan Dnyanasadhana College) 10.30-10.45 Coffee (Ken Edwards foyer) 10.45-12.15 Session 5: Parallel Sessions 5.1: Creativity, Placemaking and Resistance (Ken Edwards 526) Gay Centres: Queer social activism and networks in urban geographies in 1970s and 1980s Britain Katherine Wallace (University of Birmingham) Images Assisting Wor[l]ds: Black history murals in south and west Philadelphia and the making of black urban historicity Gareth Millington (University of York) & Irteza Anwara Mohyuddin (University of Pennsylvania) Reading the Riots: Urban disorder and the right to the city in 1980s Britain Aaron Andrews (University of Leicester) 5.2: Municipal Citizenship, Property and Privacy (Ken Edwards 527) ‘As if this Act had not been passed…’ Access to Urban Common Rights in England and the Municipal Reform Process, c. 1800-1850 Henry French (University of Exeter) Common or Uncommon Land? Normalization of allotment citizenship in interwar Denmark Mikkel Thelle (Nationalmuseet, København) The Rat and the City: Negotiating urban citizenship and the boundaries of public and private Mikkel Høghøj (Danmarks Tekniske Museum) 5.3: (Re) Ordering the Urban (Ken Edwards 528) Deprivation and Assimilation: How the Urban Elite Hijacked the People’s Time and Spaces in Early-modern Norwich Vic Morgan (University of East Anglia) Between a Smock and a Card Place: Locating Industries in a Medieval Textile Town Joe Chick (University of Leicester) Revisiting the Qazi’s Court: locating ‘urban space’ in the port city of Khambayat Aditi Mann (Jawaharlal Nehru University) 12.15 -13.15 Session 6: Plenary - The Modern British City (Ken Edwards LT3) From the Victorian to the Modern City Simon Gunn (University of Leicester) Waiting, Queuing, Traffic and Delays in Northern Ireland in the Troubles Erika Hanna (University of Bristol) Women’s Activism in the Post-War British City Krista Cowman (University of Leicester) 13.15-14.00 Lunch (Percy Gee 2.20) 14.00 Conference ends
August 4, 2025 at 7:09 PM
urbanhistorygroup.bsky.social
Just one month to go until #UHG2025!

Lots of fantastic papers, plenaries, and a drinks reception kindly sponsored by @urbanhistory.bsky.social

Book your place: www.tickettailor.com/events/urban...
Urban History Group Annual Conference Programme RECOVERY AND THE CITY THURSDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER (ROOM) 12 noon – 13.30 Registration (Percy Gee foyer) 12.30-13.30 Lunch (Percy Gee 2.20) 13.30-14.30 Session 1: Plenary (Ken Edwards LT3) Urban Citizenship as Urban Commons: Bourgeois Collectivism 1500-1832? Jonathan Barry (University of Exeter) 14.30-15.00 Tea (Ken Edwards foyer) 15.00-16.30 Session 2: Parallel Sessions 2.1: Water, Weather and the Modern City (Ken Edwards 526) Urban Consequences of a New Property Regime: the notion of "Public Water” in late nineteenth-century Budapest Veronika Eszik (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) Rainfall, Climate Resilience, and Markets in Limerick, 1899-1932 Erika Hanna (University of Bristol) Thames Flood Prevention in Late Nineteenth-Century London: Controlling urban Space by the Metropolitan Board of Works Rye (Ryuya) Hashiguchi (Chuo University) 2.2: Welfare and the Post-Colonial City in Britain (Ken Edwards 527) Intimate Enemies: Stuart Hall, cultural studies and urban Britain Nick Beech (University of Birmingham) Lonely Londoners: Race, subdivision and the psychosocial turn in postwar London Alistair Cartwright (University of Liverpool) "Race Relations" and Post-war Housing in Britain: Urban sociology and the modes of production debates Sonali Dhanpal (Columbia University) Beyond the NHS: Decolonisation, healthcare and activism in postwar Liverpool Sam Wetherell (University of York) 2.3: Creating Healthier Environments (Ken Edwards 528) Housing Inspectors in Nineteenth-Century France: the crossing-point between state bureaucracy and local expertise Will Clement (University of Manchester) Making Citizens in the Welfare City: The expansion of municipal health care in Copenhagen and Kristiania, 1870–1920 Magnus Linnarson & Mats Hallenberg (Stockholm University) Urban Commons as a Bridge between the Spatial and the Social: Pro-poor housing programmes in Addis Ababa and commoning practices Marianna Charitonidou (Athens School of Fine Arts) 17.00 – 18.30 Session 3: New Researchers’ Panels 3.1: First Year PhD Session (Ken Edwards 526) Forging Identities: Telford and the Ironbridge Gorge Tegwen Hammersley (Keele University) Exploring the History of New Earswick: reform, social mix, and identity in a planned community Sian Broadhurst (University of York) Fingers Crossed: The National Lottery and urban regeneration in turn of the millennium Britain Tom Goodwin (University of Warwick) 3.2: Mapping, Movement and the Demography (Ken Edwards 527) Intracity Transit in Sixteenth Century Paris Johan Smoller-Marcotullio (University College, London) Geocoding British Censuses for England and Wales Guillaume Proffit (CAMPOP, University of Cambridge) Unended Educational Segregation in the Rust Belt: Arthur v. Nyquist (1976) in Buffalo Shu Wan 3.3: Protest, People and Space (Ken Edwards 528) ‘Cities are for people, not for private and commercial motor vehicles’: Public and private space in Newcastle upon Tyne’s urban transport in the later twentieth century Adam Dixon (Northumbria University) A Lightning Rod for Protest: The ‘National Monument’ in Cork City, Ireland, 1898-2024 Tom Spalding (MTU, Cork) “Make the most of your leisure time”: Riots, cold War and the Children’s Playground Association, 1966-1974 Colin Lam (Chinese University of Hong Kong) 18.30 Drinks Reception (Percy Gee 2.20) (Presented by Urban History, CUP)
August 4, 2025 at 7:09 PM
urbanhistorygroup.bsky.social
The programme for our new biennial conference, held at the University of Leicester from 4th to 5th September 2025 is now available: urbanhistorygroup.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...
July 29, 2025 at 5:14 PM
urbanhistorygroup.bsky.social
There's still plenty of time to submit your abstracts for our conference on 'The Urban Commons: Rights and Citizenship in the City from the Medieval to the Modern'

PGRs and ECRs can also submit papers on any topic for the New Researchers' sessions

urbanhistorygroup.wordpress.com/2024/11/15/c...
Screenshot of text reading: New Researchers Sessions Proposals from graduate students, doctoral candidates and ECRs are a vital aspect of the Urban History conference and we will once again host a two-stranded new researchers forum. The first strand gives postgraduate researchers and ECRs the chance to present conventional papers that are the same length as main sessions, but need not be related to the main conference theme. The second strand provides an opportunity for first-year PhD students to present a 10-minute introduction to their topic, archival sources, and historiography. This is an opportunity to obtain feedback from active researchers in the field of urban history, but also to introduce your work to colleagues in the field.
February 9, 2025 at 10:35 AM