Anna Drury, Economic & Social History, Lancaster University (2023 Cohort)

Hello!

My name is Anna Drury. Since starting my PhD in October last year, I had the great privilege of acting as Chair of the Organising Committee for 2024’s Lancaster Historical Postgraduate Conference (LHPC), and I am very happy to report that LHPC 2024 was a roaring success!

A quick history of the Lancaster Historical Postgraduate Conference, for those readers unfamiliar with LHPC! Since 1995, postgraduates in the History Department here at Lancaster University have organised an academic conference for postgraduates and early career researchers. This conference was formerly known as HistFest and since 2021 has been known as Lancaster Historical Postgraduate Conference (LHPC). LHPC 2024 was the 28^th such event, offering a friendly and supportive environment to present research.

Held on the 13^th and 14^th June, we were absolutely delighted by the large and diverse body of postgraduates who attended this year’s conference. In total, we had forty-six speakers from twenty different universities. A special mention must be given to the delegates from Trinity College, in Dublin; the University of Cologne, in Germany; and our-every growing contingent of LHPC attendees from the University of Padua, in Italy, who flew especially to be with us! Our speakers were spread across fifteen panels, encompassing a wide range of periods and themes, and spanning histories from ‘Ambiguity & the Roman World’, to ‘East & Central Asia’, to ‘Gendered Silences’. LHPC’s conference theme for 2024 was Transcending Boundaries, which had interdisciplinarity at its core. We were especially pleased to bring together such a wide array of speakers, not only with disciplinary backgrounds in History and Heritage Studies, but in English Literature; Politics, Philosophy, and Religion; Gender Studies; Sociology; and Psychology, to name but a few! It was wonderful to see not only the exchange of brilliant ideas, but the forging of new friendships, and the discussion of future collaborations. We believe this is what makes LHPC so special.  

We were all blown away by the quality of our speakers. Several of my colleagues, who have diligently attended LHPC year after year, remarked they had heard some of the best LHPC papers ever this year! Each one of our delegates showed great intellectual maturity, presenting on their subject area with impressive ease and confidence. Some of my absolute favourite papers included Jocelyn Xu (University of York) – ‘A Novel Approach of Reframing Chinese Women’s War Memories: Integrating Female Agency with Public Historiography’; and Candace Singh (University of St Andrews) – ‘The Kinesis of Intimacy: Marina Abramović and Ulay’s Performance Camaraderie as Radical Expression, c. 1976-1988’.

Another standout paper was the one presented by this year’s Keynote Speaker, Andrea Livesey. Senior Lecturer in the History of Slavery at Liverpool John Moores University, Andrea spoke to us about ‘Imagining “Granny Marie”: Understanding Black Maternal Health in Diasporic Spaces (Louisiana and Liverpool)’. Beginning with a photograph of Marie Hoover (1831-1936), who ‘grannied’ (delivered) generations of children – Black and white – on Oakland plantation, Louisiana, Andrea shared with the audience how Hoover’s picture had inspired an academic journey for her. Grappling with the extensive archival silences around Black health, Andrea discussed how through adopting an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach to writing history, she was able to explore in her research the importance of community-based birthing practices throughout the nineteenth-century Black diaspora. Combining archival research; folklore and ‘folk medicine’; and the programme of team-led creative community engagement, the ‘Black Maternal Health Project’, Andrea’s crucial work highlighted to us all the importance of reflecting on how we conduct our research; and, perhaps most poignantly, how we can use history as a tool to understand and confront present injustices and disparities. 

 I want to end with some thank-yous. LHPC 2024’s Organising Committee would like to thank our community of PhD students here in the History Department at Lancaster, who generously gave their time to both chair our panels and welcome our guests. To our audience – including proud parents, students, and members of staff – we would like to thank you for your enthusiasm for the conference, and for your thought-provoking questions for our speakers. We would like to thank each of our speakers, for submitting their paper abstracts, and for coming up to Lancaster to deliver their papers. We hope you enjoyed your time here with us! We’re also incredibly grateful to the North West Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (NWSSDTP), part of the Economic and Social Research Council, who funded this event through the Interdisciplinary Events Fund.

Finally, I would like to thank the members of this year’s Organising Committee. Jude Rowley keenly facilitated the transcending of many boundaries, given his background in Politics, Philosophy, and Religion, and International Relations. I am adamant that every conference needs a Debra Kontowtt, with her exceptional organisational skills and warm enthusiasm! And to our volunteers from the 2023-2024 MA History cohort, who are all graduating this year and going on to greater things. Zech Bates, Georgia Deeley-Bull, Ben Goodstadt, and India Sidhu committed themselves to the conference with much enthusiasm, despite the intensity of a full-time MA course, and were indispensable every step of the way, contributing to planning discussions, creating our fabulous social media and website content, and both presenting and volunteering to chair on the day.