Join me in conversation with Melissa Benn about her thought-provoking new book Life Lessons at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford at 7pm. Booking free but essential here

On 20 October 2018 I’ll be speaking on what difference one hundred years of some women having the vote has made, at a County Durham CLP women’s conference. Yay for women’s conferences!

On 22 Feb I’m joining Jon Trickett MP to discuss academies – why they’re a terrible idea and what we can do to replace them. Please come and join the discussion. Details here: 

This play, based on a radio trilogy composed by Shelagh Delaney, is going to be ace. You can book tickets here  safe in the knowledge I am not performing in it. The link gives you information about the play’s content, which spans women’s lives across the last 60 years. It  is part of a bigger project on the history of working-class women, culture, and feminism, involving social and affordable housing tenants in a Salford high rise, MaD Theatre Company, and the Working Class Movement Library, which is connected with my forthcoming biography of Shelagh Delaney: more details here.

I’ll be talking as part of a panel on this photographer’s work in working-class districts of postwar London. More details here

On 5 April 2017 I am giving the keynote lecture at the annual Social History Society conference. I’ll be talking about ‘The myths of social mobility in 20th century Britain’. This event will be at the Institute of Education in London. You may need to register for the conference to attend. For more details see the Social History Society website.

On 13 Dec 2016 I joined Alan Milburn and others to debate “seeking social mobility solutions: is equality of opportunity in higher education and the professions possible within the current system?” at Inner Temple in London.  SOLD OUT

On 5 October I’m giving a free public talk at Leeds Central Library on Flappers and Factory Girls: how young women changed Britain. This invitation, from historians Kate Dossett and Laura King at Leeds University, means a lot to me. As readers of The People will know, my mum hails from Hunslet in Leeds. My first book, Young women, work, and family in England 1918-1950 has a front cover photo of young women workers at a Leeds factory (it is currently priced at 93 quid by Oxford University Press; more than most of those women earned in a year). I am very grateful to the wonderful West Yorkshire Archive Service for allowing me to use that photo and for their help in locating it. For lots of reasons Leeds is a very special city, and I’m delighted to be invited to speak there. For more details see the Events page.

Come join me, Jon Cruddas and others to discuss Englishness at Momentum’s Festival of Ideas in Liverpool on Mon 26 September 2016. Details here. Excellent looking event on higher education chaired by Sol Gamsu directly precedes it – hope to see you there!

On 3 November 2016 come to Salford’s brilliant Working Class Movement Library to learn more about Shelagh Delaney from me, and to see MaD Theatre Company read a new play by Charlotte Delaney, Sweet Responsibility, about women and friendship. More on the events page.