RHN 116/2019 | Event
Organiser: British Agricultural History Society (BAHS)
7 December 2019, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London, UK
BAHS Winter Conference:
A celebration of the life and works of Professor Alun Howkins (1947-2018)
The death of Professor Alun Howkins in July 2018 deprived modern British rural history of one of its most prominent and charismatic academics. A long-standing member of the BAHS Executive Committee, Alun also served as the Society President between 2010 and 2013. His interests and publications were broad, cutting across disciplinary boundaries and historical approaches, but his central commitment was always to the history of the modern British countryside and the men and women who lived and worked there. This one-day conference will be a celebration of his life and works. The papers will address various themes that were important to Alun’s work: the nature of rural protest and its various meanings, the significance and place of song, the labour workforce on asylum and psychiatric farms and the use of oral history to rural and agricultural historians. There will also be a round table that will address the influence of Alun’s work on rural gender, political and public history.
Programme:
10.00
Registration and Coffee
10.30
Carl Griffin (University of Sussex)
Reading protest: our window on rural workers’ worlds in the 18th and 19th centuries
11.30
Vic Gammon (University of Newcastle)
“… anything which strikes a musician's fancy”: Alun Howkins, song and history
12.30
Lunch
1.30
Sarah Holland (University of Nottingham)
Psychiatry and farming: labouring life on asylum and hospital farms, c. 1850-1950
2.30
Sue Bradley ((Kings College London and University of Newcastle)
Oral history: it's place, significance and value in, to and for rural and agricultural history
3.30
Tea
3.45
Roundtable discussion
to include contributions from Clare Griffiths (Cardiff University), Karen Sayer (Leeds Trinity University) and Nicola Verdon (Sheffield Hallam University)
4.30
Conference ends
More information and registration at https://www.bahs.org.uk/Winter_Conference.html