Radical history, argued in public.
History Workshop Podcast brings historians and contributors into conversations about how the past is made, used, contested, and shared. Its recent episodes move from trade union archives and public history to decolonial Eastern Europe, colonial controversy, revolutionary women, and the History Workshop Journal’s own radical inheritance.
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History Workshop Podcast is built around the idea that history is a public practice with political consequences. It does not treat the past as background. It treats it as material people use to argue, organize, teach, remember, and challenge power. Recent episodes repeatedly return to the History Workshop movement and to History Workshop Journal, especially around the journal’s 50th anniversary and 100th issue. That self-reflection gives the show an unusual shape: it is both about history and about the methods, collectives, costs, and convictions that make historical work possible. One episode links the movement to the New Left, the Trades Union movement, feminist politics, gay liberation, oral history, and international conversations about radical historical practice. Another looks back at the practical life of an editorial collective, from housing and copying costs to the slow circulation of submitted articles. The show also follows history into exhibitions and public space. “Reimagining Trades Union History” centers archives, the Combination Acts, the TUC Library collection, and the problem of turning two centuries of workers’ collective action into a public exhibition. “What Is Public History Now?” moves through Bloomsbury with a walking-tour approach to radical history and place. Other episodes widen the frame. “Teaching Eastern Europe Through A Decolonial Lens” brings decolonial history, Ukraine, nationalism, Holocaust history, queer history, and indigeneity into the same argumentative field. “Approaching British Colonial History During the Culture War” focuses on controversies around British colonial history, heritage institutions, National Trust properties, and public response. “She Who Struggles” adds revolutionary women, socialist and feminist upheavals, and the absence of women from many global histories of revolution. The show’s register is thoughtful and formal without being neutral. It is comfortable with complexity. It is also explicit about fascism, authoritarianism, Gaza, climate crisis, refugees, misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia when those pressures shape the historical question at hand. History Workshop Podcast is best understood as a forum for radical historical thinking, where scholarship is measured partly by what it helps people see in the present.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants rigorous history connected to activism, institutions, archives, teaching, and present-day political conflict. It fits those comfortable with scholarly conversation and unresolved debate.
What sets it apart: Its center of gravity is not only historical subject matter, but the practice of making history collectively and politically. The show stands apart by treating journals, exhibitions, walking tours, classrooms, oral histories, and editorial work as part of the historical field.
Listen to leading scholars, activists and writers talk about the practice of history and reflect on the social forces that are changing our world.
The photocopier enters the history books, and you start wondering who gets to write them.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A focused account of history movements that wanted the past to help change the present.
History Workshop Around the World tracks a radical historical project as it moves across borders: history as political work, as shared inquiry, and as something too consequential to leave only to professional historians.
A searching conversation about hope, friendship, and political purpose in the past during an age of upheaval.
History Workshop in Turbulent Times asks what history can offer in a present shaped by accelerating fascism and authoritarianism, the climate crisis, the genocide in Gaza, and attacks on refugees and marginalized people.
A grounded account of collective editing, with borrowed copiers and postal delays folded into a wider democratic project.
Mary Beth Hamilton opens this 50th-anniversary History Workshop podcast conversation with a clear sense of what History Workshop Journal has meant: activist editing, collective labor, and a long commitment to making history less sealed off from the people who live it.
A timely, demanding conversation about teaching Eastern Europe through decolonial questions.
History Workshop Podcast turns to a persistent blind spot in the classroom: Eastern Europe is often treated as an add-on to standard history syllabi, while post-colonial history has tended to leave the region outside its frame.
Civics, history, and bureaucracy with jokes attached.
Overlooked lives, read from the sources, talked through warmly.
["History Workshop podcast marks the 50th anniversary of History Workshop Journal and its 100th issue with 'History Workshop Around the World.'", "Mary Beth Hamilton and Rosa Campbell host Andrew Flynn, Astrid von Rosen, Hiro Matsubara, and Noor Niftahudin as they compare Sweden, South Africa, and Japan.", "Noor Niftahudin links the Wits History Workshop to the 1976 student uprising, the strike wave, and anti-apartheid social history in Johannesburg.", "Andrew Flynn and Astrid von Rosen trace Dig Where You Stand from 1975-1985 study circles to later academic critique, while Hiro Matsubara connects Japanese people's history to a 1950s democratizing project."]
History Workshop Journal’s 100th-issue episode, recorded on 18 September 2025, asks what history can offer as fascism, authoritarianism, Gaza, and climate crisis intensify.
History Workshop Podcast marks the 50th anniversary of History Workshop Journal and its 100th issue with Mary Beth Hamilton, Becky Rutherford, Vivian Chan, Sally Alexander, and Jeffrey Weeks.
History Workshop Podcast's Mary Beth Hamilton talks with Indy Buller, Chelsea Collinson, Peter Fisher, Jenny Yu, and Laura Schwartz about the LSE Library Gallery exhibition "Combining Efforts: 200 Years of Trade Union History." The episode uses the 200th anniversary of the 1825 Combination Acts to trace how unions were restricted, legalized, and repeatedly limited across British labor history.
History Workshop Podcast’s Mary Beth Hamilton talks with Anna Heikova of the University of Warwick and Oksana Dudko of the University of Toronto about teaching Eastern Europe through a decolonial lens.
Mary Beth Hamilton interviews Laura Forster and Joel White about their book Friends in Common: Radical Friendship and Everyday Solidarities.
Mary Beth Hamilton introduces paperwork as a tool for people with limited power, and Lisbeth Corins frames records as resources communities can use.
Mary Beth Hamilton interviews David Archibald, a University of Glasgow professor and Tenementals founder, about making Glasgow history through music.
A roundtable discussion with contributors to 'She Who Struggles', a book about revolutionary women who shaped 20th century socialist and feminist movements worldwide.
A podcast episode exploring the question 'What is public history now?' through a conference and a walking tour of Bloomsbury's radical past.
Professor Corinne Fowler discusses the controversies surrounding British colonial history and heritage, drawing from her experience with the National Trust and her forthcoming book.
An interview with historian Sheila Rowbotham about her new memoir covering her activism and writing during the 1970s women's liberation movement.
Editors of History Workshop Journal discuss a virtual special issue on black British histories, exploring the purpose of black history as both a genre and a form of radical politics.