Dr Laura C. Forster (University of York) will deliver an online and in-person talk on Tuesday 9 June titled: “Exile, affinity, and the afterlives of the Paris Commune in Britain”, covering her recent book, The Paris Commune in Britain: Radicals, Refugees, and Revolutionaries after 1871 (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Dr Forster’s paper examines the intellectual and political afterlives of the Paris Commune in Britain. Focusing on the Communard refugees who arrived in Britain following the Commune’s defeat in May 1871, it reconstructs a transnational history attentive to the intimate, spatial, and emotional contexts in which radical ideas were forged and exchanged.

A spatial approach situates Communard exiles within the geography of London, mapping the sites where exiles and British radicals met, debated, socialised, and developed collaborative projects. These overlapping radical geographies reveal how ideas moved across borders and how communities were perceived by allies and antagonists alike.

The paper also foregrounds the friendships and affinities that connected individual Communards with emerging British socialists, demonstrating how personal encounters shaped political commitments and interpretations of the Commune’s meaning.

From intimate friendships that prompted individual political conversions, to the production of international symbols able to galvanize a nationwide socialist movement, the Commune’s diffuse legacies operated across multiple scales. By emphasising lived experience, sociability, and urban space, the paper argues that the Commune mattered profoundly in Britain and illuminates broader processes in modern social, cultural, and intellectual history.

The event will be held both online and in-person: 9 June, 16:00-17:30pm (Paris time) – 15:00-16:30 GMT.

Location: Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Campus Nation, Room C201, 8 avenue de Saint-Mandé, Paris 12°.

Dr Laura C. Forster is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of York (Department of History, Vanbrugh College) and a member of the collective that edits the History Workshop Journal.

For further details and to join online, please contact Yann Béliard.