Urban History Group Conference 2025.

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The Urban Commons: Rights and Citizenship in the City from the Medieval to the Modern.

Ideas of the urban commons have been important in cities throughout history. Examining their importance questions the extent to which the city is a site of freedom and free expression, yet also reveals the ways that places, behaviours, and protest are policed. Furthermore, how have attitudes towards urban commons changed over time and in different places? Medieval and early modern townspeople, for example, habitually contested the regulation of common spaces such as marketplaces, while also invoking the idea of the ‘commons’, and the ‘commonweal’ in all kinds of debates around power and control. The Chartists famously exerted their right to collect and protest on sites such as Kennington Common and St Peter’s Field. Since the 1950s, the development of shopping precincts has created new types of private space, and increasingly policed appropriate behaviours in the city. What these examples reveal is that ideas of who has a right to the city, what can be done, and who can do it, constantly shift in different periods and in differing geographic locations.In exploring the idea of the urban commons, the conference also asks participants to consider issues of ownership of, and participation in the urban past. In so doing, it takes inspiration from the vitality of the impact agenda which has led to much new co-produced urban research and local history projects. We would therefore welcome researchers who wish to reflect on how impact projects and community partnerships shaped their research, asking how these projects have shaped the questions they have asked about cities and the things they have learned?

The 2025 conference represents a particularly exciting moment as the former Pre-Modern Towns Group conference is now incorporated with the Urban History Group. The conference has two elements: the Main Theme – which this year looks at the history of urban commons and public space – and a New Researchers strand that welcomes papers from ECRs on any aspect of urban history.

Programme
THURSDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER

• 12 noon Registration Open
• 12.30-13.30 Lunch
• 13.30–14.30 Session 1: Plenary Session
• 14.30-15.00 Tea
• 15.00-16.30 Session 2: Parallel Sessions
• 17.00 – 18.30 Session 3: New Researchers’ Sessions
• 18.30 Drinks Reception to mark the 40th Anniversary of the Centre for Urban
• History (Presented by Urban History, CUP)

FRIDAY 5TH SEPTEMBER

• 9.00 – 10.30 Session 4: Parallel Sessions
• 10.30 – 10.45 Coffee
• 10.45 – 12.15 Session 5: Parallel Sessions
• 12.15 – 13.15 Session 6: Final Plenary Session
• 13.15-14.00 Lunch
• 14.00 Conference ends

The full programme will be uploaded to the UHG website soon, more information and registration here

For further details please contact: