Calls for Papers

Workshop – MOVING OUT AND MOVING ON IN THE POST-WAR DECADES: DATA & METHODS FOR RESEARCHING YOUNG PEOPLE’S LIVES

This free one-day workshop will bring together researchers interested in young people’s experiences of leaving home and striving for independence in the post-war decades. It will foreground methods and sources for researching seemingly mundane aspects of everyday life, such as living arrangements, relationships, leisure and travel.

Exploration of the ordinary lives of post-war young people is gathering momentum amongst historians, youth researchers and others. Yet existing knowledge of this period remains sketchy, often focused on a narrow demographic: white, urban, male. Given profound changes in the post-war youth landscape – burgeoning consumer culture, the expansion of post-compulsory education, early marriage – research is needed which acknowledges the social diversity of youth and the significance of place and spatial mobilities. The quotidian and mundane are valuable lenses for understanding post-war social change; the challenge is in locating sources and developing techniques for working productively with them.

Led by Professors Sue Heath and Penny Tinkler of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives, and funded by the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, this workshop will provide an opportunity to:

  • present work in progress;
  • reflect on the affordances of diverse sources (eg visual or material sources; oral histories; elicitation data);
  • explore resources for researching post-war youth held in the John Rylands Library;
  • network with other researchers.

We invite abstracts (max 200 words) for short presentations of work in progress which speak to any of these themes. We particularly welcome contributions from postgraduate and early career researchers.

To submit an abstract and/or to register your interest in attending the workshop, please email: sue.heath@manchester.ac.uk

Deadline for abstracts: Friday 22nd March 2024