For the Memorial Lectures, 1998-2007, click here.

20 October 2006

Asylum Histories

The final symposium in the series, 'Movement of Peoples, 17th-21st century', co-sponsored by the RSHC and the Institute of Historical Research.

Speakers: Liza Schuster (Compass, Oxford); Anita Fábos (Refugee Studies, University of East London); Peter Fitzpatrick (Birkbeck College); Stephen Castles (Refugees Study Centre, Oxford).

31 October 2006

Book launch for London: City of Disappearances, ed. Iain Sinclair

A collection of essays by leading writers including JG Ballard, Will Self and Marina Warner, reveal the capital in unfamiliar guises. Three contributors – Rachel Lichtenstein, Patrick Wright and Sukhdev Sandhu – joined Iain Sinclair in conversation.

This event was co-hosted by the Bishopsgate Institute and Penguin Books.

1 December 2006

Book launch for The Lost World of British Communism, by Raphael Samuel

Raphael Samuel, one of postwar Britain’s most notable historians, posthumously evokes the world of British Communism in the 1940s and 50s. A discussion of the book was followed by a reception. This event was co-hosted by the Bishopsgate Institute and Verso Books.

In New Left Review in the mid-80s Raphael Samuel published three essays on the world of British Communism in which he had grown up in the 1940s and 50s.  Verso has now reprinted these in book form to mark the tenth anniversary of his death.  A tour de force of historical writing, the essays draw on novels, memoirs, interviews, Party literature and archives, as well as Samuel's own childhood recollections, in order to conjure up an era when the movement was at the height of its political and theoretical power.

A launch party and roundtable discussion of The Lost World of British Communism took place at the Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate  (opposite Liverpool St Station) on Friday December 1st. Speakers included Eric Hobsbawm, Jean McCrindle, Kevin Morgan and Geoff Andrews.

2 December 2006

People's London

A day-long public event in commemoration of Raphael Samuel, organised by the Raphael Samuel History Centre, University of East London.

 Psychoanalysis and History Seminar

11 October 2006	Tracey Loughran (University of Manchester)	Shell shock and the first world war
22 November 2006	Susannah Radstone (UEL)	Trauma and its Fascinations
7 February 2007	David Reggio (Goldsmiths)	Wartime France and the Psychiatric Fraternity of Saint-Albain
21 March 2007	Barbara Caine (University of Monash, Melbourne)	Biography and History
25 April 2007	Mary Jacobus (CRASSH, Cambridge)	Touching Things: Psyche and the Inanimate
16 May 2007	Felicity Callard (Queen Mary, London)	From Agoraphobia to Panic Disorder: the psychiatric attack on psychoanalytic models of anxiety
13 June 2007	Alex Potts (University of Michigan)	The Conscious Unconscious: Painting in the Aftermath of the Second World War
17 October 2007	Luisa Passerini (Turin)	Emotions between history and psychoanalysis
14 November 2007	Gail Lewis (Open University)	Birthing Racial Difference: Conversations with my mother and others
12 December 2007	Marybeth Hamilton (Birkbeck)	Alan Lomax, Jelly Roll Morton, and the Dream-time of Jazz
20 February 2008	Daniel Grey (Roehampton)	Fantasy and testimony by child murder defendants in England, 1880-1922
14 May 2008	Janet Sayers (Kent)	Art & psychoanalysis: Adrian Stokes & history
11 June 2008	Howard Caygill (Goldsmiths)	'Heidegger and Psychoanalysis'

 

Cultural Memory Seminar

Organised jointly by the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies and the Raphael Samuel Centre, University of East London.  Organizers: Richard Crownshaw (Goldsmith's) and Carrie Hamilton and Susannah Radstone (University of East London) from January 2006.

This seminar builds on the programme for the Institute’s MA in Cultural Memory. It aims to bring together students, researchers, academics and cultural practitioners in order to share ongoing research and broaden horizons. In particular it aims to provide the impetus and models for work across national and disciplinary boundaries.

The seminar meets once a term.  Click here to visit the seminar website.

17 February 2007	Memory and Postcolonialism in Southern Africa	Heidi Armbruster (University of Southampton) Ian Fairweather (University of Manchester Sam Durrant (University of Leeds)
12 May 2007	Memory, Ethics and Justice	Kirsten Campbell (Goldsmiths College, University of London) 'The Trial of the Event: Testimony, Fact, and Memory in the Prosecution of War Crimes' Rebecca Bramall (University of East London): 'The ethics and politics of "the forgotten"' Jane Kilby (University of Salford): 'Trauma Testimony and the Ethics of Reading'
23 February 2008	Cultural Memory and Visual Culture	Annette Kuhn, 'Memory texts and memory work: performances of memory in and with visual media' Jonathan Long, 'Cityscape and Memory: Photographs of Berlin 1870/1990' Andrea Noble, 'Memory and Photographic Icons of the Mexican Revolution'

 

19 May 2007

What about the workers?

This study day organized by the Museum in Docklands in collaboration with the Raphael Samuel History Centre, University of East London explored some of the complex issues relating to labour relations in the Port of London during the 19th and 20th centuries.

 

Conversations and Disputations: discussions among historians

A series of open discussions, sponsored by the Institute of Historical Research, University of London and the Raphael Samuel History Centre, University of East London.

1 June 2007	War and Trauma: Historians of war discuss ‘shellshock’ and its legacies	Speakers: Michèle Barrett (Queen Mary); Peter Leese (Krakow); Tracey Loughran (Manchester); Michael Roper (Essex). Commentator: Joanna Bourke (Birkbeck).
19 October 2007	Servants: rewriting the history of the working classes	Speakers: Carolyn Steedman; John Styles; Fae Dussart; Alison Light
Friday 2 May 2008	The Future of Class in British History	Speakers: Geoff Eley (University of Michigan);  Cora Kaplan (Queen Mary College, London;  Jon Lawrence (Emmanuel College, Cambridge)

The Docks, Empire and Slavery

14 June 2008

 

Venue: Museum in Docklands

 

The modern docks system in London was built at the height of Britain’s role as an imperial and commercial power. How did the docks contribute to that power, and how did they provide people of the empire with access to London?  These and many other questions were explored by an exciting study day at Museum in Docklands on Saturday 14 June 2008, sponsored by the Museum in Docklands and the Raphael Samuel History Centre.

 

Sessions on:

Accommodating Empire: the West India Docks Warehouses / Curating Slavery and the Docks / Screening of rediscovered film of the London Docks. / The East India Docks and East London / The Bengali Community and the Docks / Working the Docks: Sikhs in the postwar period / Tour of the Museum’s New Gallery, London, Sugar & Slavery

 

For full details of the event, click here

You can also download a flyer from here

 

 

Knowing the Past, Shaping the Future: History and the Making of Public Policy

Thursday 19 June 2008

A series of public discussions organised by the Raphael Samuel History Centre, University of East London, in partnership with Bishopsgate Institute and ‘History&Policy’ (Cambridge, Institute of Historical Research, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine)

 

THE SECURITY STATE

 Venue: Bishopsgate Institute, Bishopsgate, London EC2 (just across from Liverpool Street Station)

 

Modern western states keep a close eye on their populations. In the name of security, people’s movements are watched; their jobs, travels, finances - sometimes even their words - monitored and recorded. In Britain, as elsewhere, fear of terrorism is partly responsible for this, yet ‘the security state’ has been growing for many years. In this discussion, historians Jane Caplan (co-author of Documenting Individual Identity) and Edward Higgs (author of The Information State) meet with three security experts - Ross Anderson (Security Engineering, Cambridge), Sandra Bell (Royal United Services Institute), Richard Norton-Taylor (Guardian security correspondent) - to explore the rise and rise of the security state and its implications for us today.

 

For other events at the Bishopsgate Institute, visit www.bishopsgate.org.uk.

For ‘History&Policy’, see www.historyandpolicy.org/.