BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Histories of RGSI (Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Identity) - ECPv6.17.5.1//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://rgsi.mmu.ac.uk
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Histories of RGSI (Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Identity)
REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H
X-Robots-Tag:noindex
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:UTC
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:+0000
TZOFFSETTO:+0000
TZNAME:UTC
DTSTART:20240101T000000
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260721T091500
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260722T173000
DTSTAMP:20260714T131521Z
CREATED:20251120T174303Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260714T131521Z
UID:640-1784625300-1784741400@rgsi.mmu.ac.uk
SUMMARY:Life Histories in Mind: Mental Ill Health and Learning Disability in Context
DESCRIPTION:Organised by Dr Rebecca Ball and Professor Rob Ellis  \n\n\n\nPlease see call for papers below; a PDF of the conference programme is available here. \n\n\n\nThe aim of this conference is to explore mental ill health and learning disabilities in the contextof life and experiential histories. Early research in these areas focussed on biographies ofrelatively well-known medical practioners\, with details of their achievements in progressingthe history of ‘care’ and treatment. Since the 1980s\, scholars have attempted\, with varyingdegrees of success\, to prioritse the ‘voices’ of patents and service users with a view tocapturing a more detailed and critcal understanding of the past and present. As historicalinquiry has moved into newer areas of analysis there is now a clearer understanding of themany individuals and groups\, beyond those offered up by institutional and medical records\,involved in treatment regimes. This includes the importance of life beyond the diagnosis.Allied to this has been the newer modes of storytelling that have arisen from onlineopportunities and creatve partnerships between academics and specialists in other fields\,including\, artists\, theatre practitioners\, and heritage professionals. These efforts reflect theinter-and cross-disciplinary interest in life histories and the complexities of sharing them.Within this broad framework we invite abstracts that seek to reinvigorate the possibilitiesoffered by life narratives (broadly defined) and their place within our understandings ofmental health and illness and learning disability. We hope this will include original researchutilising a range of sources and methodologies across a wide chronology\, and from a range ofdisciplines.
URL:https://rgsi.mmu.ac.uk/event/life-histories-in-mind-mental-ill-health-and-learning-disability-in-context/
LOCATION:Manchester Metropolitan University
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260629T130000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260630T170000
DTSTAMP:20260622T133339Z
CREATED:20251215T171005Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260622T133339Z
UID:679-1782738000-1782838800@rgsi.mmu.ac.uk
SUMMARY:Everyday Communication in the Holocaust
DESCRIPTION:See below the call for papers. The programme can be downloaded here. \n\n\n\nThis workshop seeks to further our understanding of communication among persecuted groups in the Holocaust. We explore the diverse ways in which these groups used communication to create meaning\, express identity\, and maintain connections both during and after the Holocaust. By examining the traces of communication that were never formally recorded at the time\, we place the focus on the everyday\, the ephemeral\, and the non-verbal. \n\n\n\nWe invite papers that recover the texture/s of everyday communication during and after the Holocaust in all its forms. These include informal forms of communication such as rumour\, jokes/humour\, gossip\, hearsay\, songs\, and languages; hidden forms of communication that are coded\, secret\, and marginal; and non-verbal forms of communication such as gestures\, facial expressions\, posture\, silences\, and physical signs. We also encourage participants to consider how communicative practices functioned emotionally: to sustain hope\, manage fear\, foster solidarity\, or express resistance. Finally\, we wish to emphasise the question of how these forms of communication intersected with identity categories including gender\, sexuality\, religion\, age\, and nationality. We ask how men\, women\, queer people\, and other groups developed distinct modes of communication under persecution\, as well as how intersecting identity categories shaped communicative practices between and among different groups and individuals. \n\n\n\nThis workshop brings together several aspects of recent historiography in the field of Holocaust studies\, as scholars have explored distinct forms of communication. These include Shirli Gilbert’s work on music (2005)\, Amos Goldberg’s research on rumour (2016) and Rosie Ramsden’s work on gendered rumour (2026)\, David Slucki\, Avinoam Patt and Gabriel Finder’s book on humour (2020)\, Jennifer Putnam’s research on graffiti (2024)\, Barnabas Balint’s work on coded language (2023)\, and Michaela Wolf’s edited collection on interpreting and interpretive communication in Nazi concentration camps (2016). Combining these under the umbrella of communication\, we identify common threads as well as exploring how communicative practices of all sorts are often necessarily fleeting\, surviving only as traces of experience\, emotion\, and perception in the past. As a result\, we bring the ephemeral\, everyday\, and non-verbal together into one concept. \n\n\n\nDefining ‘communication’ broadly\, we encourage contributions about\, but not limited to\, the following: \n\n\n\n\nEveryday and informal communication – including rumour\, jokes\, gossip\, graffiti\, whispered warnings\, hearsay\, songs\, secrets\, myths\, letters and postcards\, improvised or emergent languages\, and interpreting\n\n\n\nMeaning-making through communication – how persecuted groups gathered\, shared\, and made sense of information in constrained conditions\n\n\n\nIdentity formation and communication – how communication both shaped and was shaped by different identities – gender\, sexuality\, age\, religion\, nationality etc.\n\n\n\nInformal/ephemeral exchanges – not necessarily formally documented but fragments of communication that shape our understanding of how the Holocaust was experienced/understood\n\n\n\nHidden forms of communication – coded\, hidden\, marginal modes of communication\n\n\n\nNon-verbal communication and body language – occurring through the body rather than (or alongside) words\, including gestures\, facial expressions\, posture\, silences\, physical signs used when speech was dangerous/impossible\, and shared bodily practices\n\n\n\nThe body as testimony – how the body recorded and communicated the experience of the Holocaust\, such as through scars\, tattoos\, and infertility\n\n\n\n\nApplicants are invited to submit a short biography (150 words) and an abstract (200 words) to Rosie Ramsden (r.ramsden@mmu.ac.uk) and Barnabas Balint (barnabas.balint@vwi.ac.at) by 4 May 2026. \n\n\n\nKey dates \n\n\n\nMonday 4 May 2026 – Deadline for applications \n\n\n\nMonday 11 May 2026 – Notification of successful application \n\n\n\nTuesday – Wednesday 29-30 June 2026 – Workshop \n\n\n\nThis workshop is partly funded by the Histories of RGSI Research Group at Manchester Metropolitan University and will be held at MMU.
URL:https://rgsi.mmu.ac.uk/event/everyday-communication-in-the-holocaust/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260305T110000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260305T123000
DTSTAMP:20260216T184753Z
CREATED:20260216T184626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260216T184753Z
UID:700-1772708400-1772713800@rgsi.mmu.ac.uk
SUMMARY:I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany
DESCRIPTION:Dr Samuel Clowes Huneke (George Mason University) \n\n\n\nThursday 5 March\, 11am to 12.30pm \n\n\n\nGeoffrey Manton\, room 229 \n\n\n\nSam will discuss his soon to be published book I Will Not Abandon You. The book brings to life the unrelenting defiance of queer women in fascist Germany\, showing how love\, queer resistance\, and collective action survived in the harrowing circumstances of Nazi rule. Drawing on a decade of archival research\, the book takes readers into a hidden world\, from the wartime balls that lesbian activists continued to organize to the concentration camps where women accused of loving women were imprisoned. Following a diverse cast of characters\, it reveals both the oppression that queer women faced and how they resisted fascism in solidarity with one another. Arguing that this solidarity – which transcended race\, class\, and gender – offers a compelling alternative to today’s fractured identity politics\, I Will Not Abandon You is a new history of queer life under fascism and a call to rethink the foundations of progressive politics today. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\nSamuel Clowes Huneke is associate professor of history at George Mason University. A historian of modern Germany\, he is the author of States of Liberation: Gay Men between Dictatorship and Democracy in Cold War Germany (2022)\, A Queer Theory of the State (2023)\, and I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany (2026) as well as the co-editor of Reimagining Citizenship in Postwar Europe (2025). He is presently at work on a new book\, tentatively titled Queer: A History of the World. \n\n\n\nAll welcome and no need to book.
URL:https://rgsi.mmu.ac.uk/event/i-will-not-abandon-you-queer-women-in-nazi-germany/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20260115T160000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20260115T173000
DTSTAMP:20251215T170514Z
CREATED:20251208T142834Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251215T170514Z
UID:668-1768492800-1768498200@rgsi.mmu.ac.uk
SUMMARY:Decolonial Bricolage: Global Far-right Future-making in Orbán’s Hungary
DESCRIPTION:The Histories of RGSI (Race\, Gender\, Sexuality and Identity) research group will host a talk with Dr Annastiina Kallius (University of Helsinki\, Institute for Advanced Study) on the rise of the far right in Hungary as well as across the globe. She will discuss how the concept of ‘decolonisation’ has been used to further anti-immigration legislation\, the ideological complexities which make this kind of co-opting possible\, and her ethnographic findings derived from gatherings of far-right politicians and pundits.  \n\n\n\nDecolonial Bricolage: Global Far-right Future-making in Orbán’s Hungary \n\n\n\nSince the late 2010s\, Budapest has evolved into a vibrant hub of knowledge production\, where far-right thinkers from around the world exchange advice on statecraft. They gather in spaces ranging from chic\, bookish cafés to festivals and lavish conferences. Differences in economic policy give way to a shared worldview that denounces secularization\, excessive individualism\, and the erosion of ethnic homogeneity. Increasingly\, both Hungarian and foreign thinkers in this sphere criticize the coloniality of liberal knowledge production and explicitly adopt the language of decolonialism.What political and intellectual legacies sustain this far-right claim to decolonialism? Why is the growing global tension between universalism and particularism especially potent in the Eastern European context? I address these questions through an ethnographic examination of spaces of far-right future-making in Budapest. To understand how elements of decolonial thought travels from academic environments to these milieus\, I employ Lévi-Strauss’s concept ofbricolageto show how the far-right version of decolonialism recycles fragments of decolonial thought that reject liberal hegemony\, but ultimately constructs something different. This bricolage nature of far-right decolonialism becomes evident through its contrast with its analog: rather than fostering epistemic plurality\, it simply reverses the canon of knowledge production. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAnnastiina Kallius is an anthropologist and researcher at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. Her work is ethnographically grounded in Hungary and explores themes of illiberalism\, epistemology\, and migration. Her doctoral dissertation examined what happens when liberalism retreats to a marginal position both in political and epistemic terms. Her current postdoctoral project investigates the intellectual history and international networks of illiberal political philosophy.
URL:https://rgsi.mmu.ac.uk/event/decolonial-bricolage-global-far-right-future-making-in-orbans-hungary/
LOCATION:Manchester Metropolitan University\, Geoffrey Manton room 222\, Rosamund Street West\, Manchester\, M15 6EB
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=UTC:20250619T093000
DTEND;TZID=UTC:20250619T170000
DTSTAMP:20251120T180304Z
CREATED:20251120T175853Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251120T180304Z
UID:646-1750325400-1750352400@rgsi.mmu.ac.uk
SUMMARY:Histories of RGSI research symposium
DESCRIPTION:PDF programme available here \n\n\n\n09.30 Welcome (with tea and coffee)10.00 Panel OneMarie Molloy – ‘Addressing Race and Racism’: Diversifying History Curricula in School and Colleges via University-led Outreach and Widening Participation ActivitiesHaseeb Khan – Roots in Manchester and Louisville: Muhammad Ali visits Phil Magbotiwan in Manchester\, 197111.00 Break11.15 Panel TwoMark Fenemore – The ‘wrong sort’ of Nazi Serial Murderers: Paul Ogorzow and Bruno LüdkeRebecca Ball – Sex\, Contraception and Abortifacients in English working-class Autobiographies 1900-1945Marta Suarez – The Lion Cub\, the Witcher\, and the War: Ciri and Gendered Violence in the Witcher Universe12.45 Lunch1.45 Book TalkGavin Schaffer – An Unorthodox History: British Jews since 19452.30 Policy engagement with MetroPolis\, the university’s think tankKay Lalor and Rossella Pulvirenti – Influencing Asylum Law in a Hostile Environment: The Rwanda Policy and the European Convention on Human Rights3.15 Break3.30 Panel ThreeLucy Burke – Cultures of Life and Death: Disability and Dementia in Literary Depictions of the Climate EmergencyAnne-Marie McCallion – A Third Conception of Justice: Recognition\, Redistribution\, and RepatriationRob Ellis – Understanding Deinstitutionalization in the Capital: London\, Community Care and the 1959 Mental Health Act5.00 Close
URL:https://rgsi.mmu.ac.uk/event/histories-of-rgsi-research-symposium/
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR