Conference
SHS Annual Conference 2024
Durham
2024-07-08 – 2024-07-10
Our next annual conference will be held in person at Durham University. It will be our first conference in the North East of England since Northumbria in 2014.
What to Expect
Our conference is the largest gathering of social and cultural historians in the UK. For almost fifty years, our members have transformed historical research by exploring the ways our social worlds are made, imagined, shared and shattered.
Our next annual conference will take place at Durham University, 8-10 July 2024. It will be the third we have held in person since the COVID-19 pandemic. While still the largest gathering of social and cultural historians in the UK, the conference will remain slightly smaller than our pre-pandemic events and we hope that participants will attend the whole event. Our aim is to create an event that is as convivial and collegial as possible.
The programme will be organised thematically and include parallel panels of papers chosen by our strand convenors. The strands are:
- Bodies, Sex and Emotions
- ‘Deviance’, Inclusion and Exclusion
- Difference, Minoritization and ‘Othering’
- Heritage, Environment, Spaces and Places
- Inequalities, Activism and Social Justice
- Life Cycles, Families and Communities
- Politics, Policy and Citizenship
- Work, Leisure and Consumption
Our standard programme includes panels of three 20-minute papers, although strand convenors will sometimes choose to programme four 15 minute papers if they are oversubscribed with strong proposals.
We are working with the Durham University to keep the costs as low as possible. There will be a discounted rate for postgraduates and those working outside academia, as well as a generous package of bursaries. The conference is not designed to make a profit.
A selection of campus bedrooms will be available for conference delegates, with other accommodation options in Durham itself.
Keynote Lecture: Professor Andy Wood, ‘The dull compulsion of economic relations: social relations and the labour process in England, 1500-1640’
Andy Wood is Professor of Social History at Durham University and a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of five books, the fourth of which, The Memory of the People: Custom and Popular Senses of the Past (Cambridge University Press, 2013) won the American Historical Association’s Leo Gershoy Award. He is currently writing three books: I Predict a Riot: A History of the World in Twelve Rebellions (Atlantic Books), Letters of Blood and Fire: Authority, Resistance and Social Relations in England, 1500-1640 (Cambridge University Press) and an embryonic text called Senses of the City: English Urban Polities, 1480-1640.
The Call for Papers has now closed.
We will be releasing more details of the programme shortly.
Registration is now open. Use the Conference Booking link or book your SHS membership account. You will be prompted to login.
If you have any questions, please see our Conference Booking FAQs.
