Class, Gender, and Generation

The centre has produced monographs, articles and edited collections on coal mining history, the Labour Party, the trade union movement, Irish nationalism and socialist politics. Such research has reconstructed the lives of socialist pioneers and working-class activists and the role that they have played in the development of modern Britain. The University of Wolverhampton is the home of the Dictionary of Labour Biography project, headed by Prof Keith Gildart. Since the initial spadework by the socialist intellectual G.D.H Cole in the 1950s, the dictionary has developed in response to both political and historiographical challenges. Recent volumes and have paid especial attention to ethnic diversity in the history of labour and to the contributions of women to the trade union movement.

Prof Keith Gildart, Prof John Benson, Dr Ben Curtis and Dr Grace Millar have explored the development of the industry, its politics, and the culture and identity of those who lived and worked in mining communities. Their research sheds new light on the industrial disputes of 1926, 1972, 1974 and 1984/5, and on the political evolution of public ownership, gender relations in mining communities, and the social impact of deindustrialization in Britain since the 1960s.

More details can be found here.

Migration and race are major research areas with a number of historians at Wolverhampton working on a range of periods, countries and economic, political and cultural contexts.  

Prof Dieter Steinert has worked on the movement and treatment of migrants in twentieth century Europe, while Dr Simon Constantine has conducted a study of the treatment of gypsies, travellers and ‘show people’ in Germany and England in the late nineteenth early twentieth century. Dr Richard Hawkins has published on migration in the West Midlands linked to the Black and Ethnic Minority Experience Project.  Dr Adam Burns has published on the history of “race” and ethnicity (especially late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century) in the United States.

Prof Keith Gildart’s research has resulted in critical reassessments of the 1960s,Northern Soul, music and working class culture and national identity. Dr Patrick Glen has produced groundbreaking work on the British Music Press, and a series of additional publications on pop music, cinema-going and counterculture. Dr Mike Cunningham and Dr Simon Constantine have also published a succession of original studies on the very different youth culture of rambling and hostelling, exploring the ethos and politics of the YHA, tracing the development of the international hosting movement in the inter-war years.

Research has focused on a range of topics, such as health, sport, and identity, that have shaped and defined the development of modern societies. Dr George Gosling has published on the development and formation of healthcare in the United Kingdom whilst Dr Adam Burns, and Prof Mike Dennis have worked on sport and its meaning to national.

• Adam Burns, The United States, 1865-1920: Reuniting a Nation, (2020)
• Keith Gildart, Keeping the Faith: A History of Northern Soul, (2020)
• George Gosling, Payment and Philanthropy in British Healthcare 1918-1948, (2017)
• Simon Constantine and Michael Cunningham, ‘Internationalism, Peace and Reconciliation: Anglo-German connections in the Youth Hostels movement, 1930-1950’, Peace and Change, (2020)
• Richard Hawkins, Progressive Politics in the Democratic Party: Samuel Untermeyer and the Jewish Anti-Nazi Boycott Campaign, (2021).
• George Kassimeris (with Leonie Jackson), ‘Negotiating Race and Religion in the West Midlands: Narratives of Inclusion and Exclusion during the 1967-69 Wolverhampton bus workers’ turban dispute’, Contemporary British History, (2016).
• Dieter Steinert, A Moment in Time: The Liberation of Jewish Child Slave Labourers, (2020)
• John Benson, White Collar Crime in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Britain, (2019)
• Mike Dennis, ‘Sports, Politics and Wild Doping in the East German Sporting Miracle’ in Robert Edelman and Christopher Young (ed.), The Whole World was Watching: Sport in the Cold War, (2019).

You can find our relevant course here MA Twentieth Century Britain.