To celebrate 50 years of the Social History Society, we’ve teamed up with the Institute of Historical Research to host a Social History Festival!

The festival will feature two expert discussion panels, a series of interactive stalls (where you will be able to try your hand at historical zine-making and find out about some fascinating projects run by our members), tours of Senate House, an extended lunch for discussion and interaction, a drinks reception, and an evening keynote lecture.

We warmly welcome history enthusiasts of whatever stripe.

Booking details are at the bottom of this page.

Key Details

📅 Friday 24 April 2026, 11am-8pm

📍 Senate House, University of London, Bloomsbury

11am – Welcome

11.30 – Panel 1

13.00 – Lunch, stalls and tours

15.00 – Panel 2

17.00 – Keynote Lecture

18.30 – Wine Reception

Panel 1: New Sources of Social History

Dr Laura Sangha is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Exeter, a historian of religion and culture in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Laura is the author of Angels and Belief in England, c. 1480-1700 (2012) and she has also published on life-writing, individual devotion and ghost beliefs. She is currently the Co-Investigator on the Leverhulme Trust project ‘The Material Culture of Wills: England 1540-1790’.

Professor Laura King is Professor of Collaborative History at Leeds University and Deputy Director of ‘History and Policy’. am a historian of the everyday, of stories, of the way history shapes the intimate lives of families and individuals. I trace how the family is a space in which we learn about the past, and analyse how families change over time. I research and teach about all sorts of aspects of families, from fatherhood to how we remember the dead. My latest book, Living with the Dead, charts the relationship we have with our dead ancestors.

Dr Paul Carter is Principal Records Specialist at the National Archives and Kew Gardens, Principal Investigator of the project ‘A Century of Struggle: Pauperism and the New Poor Law in Wales, 1834-1930’ and of ‘The Testimony of the Victorian Poor’. He previously worked on a range of innovative records-driven projects including ‘In Their Own Write’, looking in closely at surviving pauper letters.

Dr Ruth Slatter from the Institute for Historical Research, where she is Lecturer in Historic Environment & Knowledge Exchange Manager. Ruth is interested in people’s everyday experiences of religion, faith and spirituality since the nineteenth century. To explore these themes, she uses architecture and material & visual culture, historical geography and participatory approaches. She is a member of the Institute’s Centre for the History of People, Place and Community, where she is a General Editor (focused on architecture) of the Victoria County History and convenes the Centre’s People, Place and Community Seminar series.

Panel 2: 50 Years of Social History

Dr Isabella Jackson is Assistant Professor in Chinese History at Trinity College Dublin. She is the author of Shaping Modern Shanghai: Colonialism in China’s Global City and recently edited (with Yushu Geng) Rethinking Childhood in Modern Chinese History, following a major grant from the Irish Research Council to investigate Chinese child slavery, childhood and girlhood. She will discuss the social and cultural history of colonial cities, Chinese social history and the global history of childhood and mother-infant relations.

Dr Grace Huxford is Associate Professor (Reader) in Modern History at the University of Bristol, where she specializes in the social history of modern conflict, focusing particularly on the Cold War. She is author of the Korean War in Britain (2018) and a forthcoming social history of British military communities in Germany. She will discuss the cultural and social history of conflict, oral history and being part of the editorial team for Cultural & Social History.

Professor Lucy Noakes is the Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex and President of the Royal Historical Society.  Between 2017 and 2021 she was PI on the AHRC funded project ‘Reflections on the Centenary of the First World War’ and building on this she will be discussing the recent growth of collaborative projects between academic historians and partners outside of academia.

Dr Beckie Rutherford is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Worcester and an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck. Since 2023 she has been an editor at History Workshop magazine, and at this roundtable she will be discussing the past, present and future of public disability history.

Evening Keynote: Professor Naomi Tadmor, “Continuity and change in social history: experiences of poverty and the law in 17th and 18th century England”

Naomi is Professor of early modern History at Lancaster University, honorary Vice President of the Social History Society, and has recently served as its Chair. She has served on RHS Council and currently serves in the AHRC peer review college. She is the author of 2025’s The settlement of the poor in England c. 1660-1780: law, society, and state formation from Cambridge University Press. Naomi has written extensively on a wide range of social and cultural aspects of British history between 1500 and 1800. Previous books include: The social universe of the English Bible: scripture, society, and culture in early modern England (2010), and Family and friends in eighteenth-century England: household, kinship, and patronage (2001).

Booking Details

We have subsidised the ticket costs for the Festival as we want as many of our members (and non-members) to join us as possible.

If you are a member of the Society, you can book a ticket to the whole day for just £10.

If you are not a member, you can book a ticket to the whole day for £30 or attend the evening lecture for £10. You might also consider joining the Society to unlock the cheaper ticketing option and the other benefits of membership. Membership of the SHS starts at just £15, see our membership pages.

Please note that the registration fee is non-refundable. If we are required to cancel the conference, all conference fees booked and paid via the online system will be refunded in full.

If you registered and are then unable to attend please let us know at socialhistorysoc@gmail.com.