Organising community support and mutual aid during pandemics Online Meeting Thursday 2 April: 6:30pm – 8:30pm For more details and to log on please visit  historyacts.org  Ordinarily, History Acts run face-to-face workshops. With lockdown in place however, we've decided to go online, with some quickly-organised workshops, focusing specifically on activists' responses to the pandemic. For our first event we are discussing ‘Organising community support and mutual aid during pandemics’. Activi...

History of Sexuality Seminar Heart Medicine: Poppers and London’s Gay Nightlife in the 1970s-80s, Ben Mechen (KCL)  28 January 2020, 5:15pm - 7:15pm Dreyfus Room, Birkbeck, 26-8 Russell Square, London WC1B 5 DQ (please note that there is no lift access to this second-floor room) In January 1987, thirty-five Metropolitan Police officers in rubber gloves raided the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, one of the city’s most famous gay pubs, claiming it to be a den of drugs, drunkenness and prostitution. T...

Roundtable to launch 'From Sodomy Laws to Same-Sex Marriage: International Perspectives since 1789'  History of Sexuality Seminar 12 December 2019, 5:15pm - 7:15pm Dreyfus Room, Birkbeck, University of London, 26-28 Russell Square, London WC1B 5 DQ Free, no need to book With Benno Gammerl (Goldsmiths, University of London), Rebecca Jennings (UCL), Daniel Monk (Birkbeck, University of London) Inspired by recent adoptions of same-sex marriage, 'From Sodomy Laws to Same-Sex Marriage' provides...

Friday 6 December 2019, 9am – 6.45 pm John Dalton Building (T0.03), Manchester Metropolitan University Organised in cooperation between the Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage and the Raphael Samuel History Centre. Tickets – free, but please book by 1 December https://www.eventbrite.com/e/stonewall-50-years-on-gay-liberation-lesbian-feminism-in-europe-tickets-66309135409 June 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City, often credited as the spark ...

Wednesday 20 November 2019, 2.30-4.30pm London Metropolitan Archives Why are we so interested in family secrets? How should family historians deal with the things previous generations wished to keep hidden? And why are historians increasingly drawn to family history and stories of family?  Join a panel of experts working on the borders of family history and history to discuss 'Home Truths: secrets and discoveries in family history'.   With Professor Alison Light (Oxford and UCL, author of Commo...

Tuesday 29 October 2019, 5.15pm Dreyfus Room, Birkbeck, University of London, 26-28 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DQ All welcome, no need to book  Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens, University of Queensland (both), ‘Thinking Normality in Biology and Sexology, c. 1800-1950’  In 'Le Normal et le pathologique', an influential history of French medical thinking during the nineteenth century, Georges Canguilhem distinguishes between qualitative and quantitative conceptions of the normal. He finds...

Thursday 14 November 2019, 5.15-7.15pm Laws Building Room 1.00 [PLEASE NOTE ROOM CHANGE] Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Campus, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS Speakers: Tania Gessi and Ted Sale, Roma Stories Oral History Project Respondents: Graham Smith (Newcastle University), Becky Taylor (University of East Anglia), Julia Laite (Birkbeck) Chair: Nadia Valman, Raphael Samuel History Centre   The HLF-funded ‘Roma Stories’ Oral History Project shares experiences and stories ...

History of Sexuality seminar Tuesday 8 October 2019, 5.15pm. Dreyfus Room, Birkbeck, 28 Russell Square, London WC1B 4HS.  (Please note that this room is on the second floor, and unfortunately there is no lift.) This seminar is co-hosted with the Parliaments, Politics & People seminar series, and our speaker is Dr Justin Bengry from Goldsmiths, University of London. Disregarding the Past: The Problems of Pardoning Homosexual Offences This paper critically examines the 2012 Protection of ...

3.00 – 4.00pm, Wednesday 16th October 2019 Birkbeck University of London, Dreyfus Room, 28 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DQ All welcome, no need to book. This workshop features talks by two early career researchers, Peter Jones and Charlie Taverner, whose own work demonstrates the value of radical walking for understanding place and locality from the point of view of ordinary people (women, the poor, vagrants and street traders). Their papers will address problems and affordances of walking me...

Please note that seminars are postponed until further notice.   Part of the RSHC Conversations and Disputations public seminar series.  Tuesdays, 6pm to 8pm Queen Mary University of London, Arts 2, room 3.20, London E1 4NS All welcome. For information contact Barbara Taylor b.g.taylor@qmul.ac.uk 8 October 2019. Mark Lee (Oxford). 'Devotional solitude, sociability and insanity in the nineteenth century' 12 November 2019. Amy Hungerford (Yale). 'Solitude, Reading Practices and the Huma...