Galle Face Green is one of the most important public spaces in Colombo. Lara Wijesuriya traces how the public and the state have shaped Galle Face Green since independence.
Did medieval states engage in any sort of surveillance of populations based on the collection of their personal data? Trevor Dean and Patricia Skinner ask what we can learn from lists and facial descriptions of police in Italian cities.
What is the difference between poverty and scarcity? Julia McClure explores how different communities and societies mitigated the risks of resource scarcity before capitalism created poverty.
From the 1970s onwards, basketball became an important source of expression, identity, and resilience in many Black British communities. Michael Romyn explores.
What can the twisted histories of one Sri Lankan canal tell us? Sujit Sivasundaram on how the coastal environment of Colombo has been colonised and marketised, but in turn creates its own paths, through winds, waves and waters as well as…
As the global ecological crisis deepens and spreads through virus, fire and flood, Elly Robson introduces a new HWO series on The Political Environment. How have politics shaped the way we identify ecological problems and solutions, and how…
How did Black activist organisations fight racism in the London suburbs? Daniel Frost finds that they did so – in districts like Croydon and Thornton Heath – through association and alliance with the struggles of inner-city locales.
Just how much immigrant newcomers should have a voice in the political life of their new communities is a question that has occupied people for centuries. Bart Lambert explores the twists and turns of that issue in later medieval England in…
How did 1970s New York become a laboratory for a grand experiment in 'returning streets to the people'? Mariana Mogilevich argues that street life and politics in Midtown Manhattan became central to the inception of a new form pedestrian…
How do we see walking women? Using archival photography from 1950s and 1960s Turku (Finland), Tiina Männistö-Funk argues that women's care and bodily presence shapes cities as much as concrete and asphalt do.
This opening article in the 'Whose Streets?' feature considers what it means to live through the jarring collapse of public life in the midst of a pandemic and how this moment might stimulate new radical histories of the urban commons.
Amidst the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic it seems that virtual conferences are here to stay. In the first half of this post, PhD student Ed DeVane reflects on the experience of ‘doing’ an online event. The second half of this…
A new digital resource allowing users to explore former sites of Jewish memory in East London went online this week. On it you will find audio interviews, photographs, and essays about more than 70 sites (we hope to include more in future)…
What are the origins of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) hangover? David Anderson drives onto the QE2 bridge to analyse the legacies and landscapes of PFI.
What does the heritage trail format offer to the communication of radical histories? Charlotte Tomlinson introduces the East End Women’s Museum's (EEWM) Brilliant Women of Whitechapel, Bow and Barking Heritage Trail, which explores…
Charlie Taverner reflects on how historical food walks can enrich radical history by opening new up trajectories and generating unexpected perspectives on the experience of the pre-industrial city.
Stuart Butler writes on performative walking along the Thames, tracing the life of Thomas Spence, a leading revolutionary in 18th century England, advocating for the complete common ownership of land.
Kieran Connell takes us through his personal journey on what brought him to researching Handsworth, an inner city locality in Birmingham, and what it might tell us about multiculturalism in modern Britain.
These are strange times in the politics of the police. In a companion piece to his History Workshop Journal article, Jonah Miller explores the historical background to debates over stop and search.
Yellow Vests are rioting in the streets of Paris and calling for President Macron to resign. They are doing it in the streets that Baron Haussmann built to stop urban unrest 190 years ago.
Birmingham's once-vibrant suburb of Selly Oak provides a clear cut case study from very close to home of contemporary capitalism shattering a community in pursuit of profit.
