SHS Annual Conference 2026
Lancaster University
1st July, 2026 – 3rd July, 2026
Our 50th anniversary conference will be held at Lancaster University, the academic home of the Social History Society.
A Significant Milestone
The Social History Society was founded at Lancaster University in 1976 and held a conference that year on the theme of ‘Elites in Society’.
The SHS was the brainchild of Harold Perkin (the first Professor of Social History in Britain), who quietly promoted a form of social history that looked beyond class based analyses. Alongside a regular newsletter, the society’s conference was the glue that bound together its increasingly diverse membership.
As the SHS’s conferences grew, they moved from a focus on a single theme to a programme that incorporated different strands of social history. The SHS conference is now one of the largest gatherings of social historians in Britain, and incorporates work that spans time, space and various historical approaches. There are few conferences that are as diverse or as open to new ideas.
From the outset, the SHS has sought to offer a constructive space for postgraduate historians to present and gain feedback on their work. The society still prides itself on giving postgraduates the same platform as more established colleagues.
Thankfully, however, some things have changed. The first SHS conferences were held in the depths of winter (according to late founder member Eric Evans, this was because no other conference was foolhardy enough to organise events at that time of year so they could guarantee and audience). Since 2018, the conference has adopted a summer timetable, allowing outdoor events including walking tours and an unforgettable night at the Black Country Living Museum’s 1950s fairground.
We are delighted to be returning to our roots at Lancaster to celebrate our 50th anniversary.
What to Expect
Our 50th anniversary conference will take place at Lancaster University.
The conference is an in person event and will be programmed over three days, from Wednesday 1 to Friday 3 July.
The programme will be organised thematically and incorporate panels of three 20-minute papers or four 15-minute papers.
Alongside the papers, there will be a plenary roundtable, a keynote lecture from Emma Griffin, publisher tables, more hands-on workshops, and plenty of opportunities to meet colleagues and make new connections. Further details will be released soon.
Lancaster University is a campus-based university and will manage accommodation for delegates.
We are working with Lancaster University to keep the costs as low as possible. There will be a discounted rate for postgraduates and those working outside academia, as well as a generous package of bursaries. Further details will be released soon. Our conference is not designed to make a profit.
Keynote: Emma Griffin, Workers, Elites and the Making of the Modern World
We are delighted that Emma Griffin will giving the keynote at our anniversary conference. Emma is a Professor of Modern British History at Queen Mary and her work will be well known to many of our members. She has written five books, most recently Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy (Yale University Press, 2020), and is currently writing a global history of industrialisation for Penguin Press.
Her keynote engages with historians’ long fascination with the emergence of modernity. Whether we label this the ‘industrial revolution’, the ‘rise of capitalism’, or the ‘great divergence’, these literatures all have at heart a shared question: why did the West, Britain in particular, transition to modern economic growth around the end of the eighteenth century? These diverse and inter-connected literatures defy simple summary, yet it is generally the case that the humble worker is rarely centred as an explanatory force in the transition to modernity. Emma’s lecture will use comparative evidence from Britain and France to think about workers and the role they played in the rise of the modern industrialised world.
Call for Papers
We warmly welcome proposals for individual papers and panels from new and established historians, working inside and outside Higher Education.
Our conference is organised by eight thematic strands, which range across time and space. The strands have been updated for 2026 and are:
- Bodies, Sex and Emotions
- ‘Deviance’, Inclusion and Exclusion
- Spaces & Places of History and Heritage
- Inequalities, Activism and Social Justice
- Life Cycles, Families and Communities
- Politics, Policy and Citizenship
- Subalterns, Decoloniality and the Postcolonial
- Work, Leisure and Consumption
Your abstract should address at least one of our strands and indicate which is your first preference. The full details of each strand are available here.
Abstracts for individual paper should be no more than 250 words. Panel proposals should include an overarching title alongside the individual details.
Please submit your proposal by midnight on 16 January 2026.
Click here to submit a single paper proposal
Click here to submit a panel proposal
