Labour and Society Research Group

The LSRG is a collaborative Research Forum of Newcastle Upon Tyne University and Northumbria University. This multidisciplinary research group brings together diverse scholars who share concerns with new research into the histories, sociologies and geographies of labour. We encourage interdisciplinary collaborations, promote existing approaches to the study of labour, and also foster novel perspectives in our areas of interest, which fall under six thematic headings:  

Worlds of labour: The study of labour in the widest sense of the word, encompassing all facets of the lives of working people, past and present: their associational life, politics and culture.

Labour subjects: The study of labouring men and women through the social constructions of gender, sexual divisions of labour and sexually-differentiated social experiences; and through the stages of life, from childhood to old age focusing on generational transitions of labouring populations.

Labour movements: Trade unions and political parties identified with labour, notably although not exclusively labour, social democratic and communist parties: their ideologies, programmes, governmental practices; the relationship between syndicalism or anarchist movements or new social movements and labouring people; industrial relations, labour process and labour conflict or protest.

Work and consumption: Work and the place of work, as well as patterns of consumption and leisure within working-class lives.

Spaces of labour: Local, regional, national and transnational perspectives, viewed through questions of ethnicity and migration; global patterns of production, consumption and trade; and in the relationship between labour, empire and post-coloniality.

Labour’s pasts: Historical perspectives on labour, both oral and written; in cultural representation as well as through collective memory.

Furthermore, Labour History Review, the world's oldest journal in this field, is edited out of the city by historians on the LSRG.   

Please visit our sections on LSRG members and LSRG activities & events for more details.

Contact and Mailing List

For general LRSG-related queries, please contact the group’s convenor, Dr Matt Perry (matt.perry@ncl.ac.uk).   

To join the LSRG mailing list, simply go clicke here to register your details. If you encounter any difficulty subscribing to the list, please contact Daniel Laqua (daniel.laqua@northumbria.ac.uk).