This page offers brief biographies of the current members of the Society for the Study of Labour History’s Executive Committee. Contact details can be found here.

Keith Laybourn is Diamond Jubilee Professor Emeritus at the University of Huddersfield and Visiting Professor at the University of York St. John. He has written many books and articles on British labour history, social history, philanthropy, greyhound racing and the football pools, including The General Strike Day by Day (1996), Britain’s First Labour Government (with John Shepherd) in 2006, Going to the Dogs (2019),and The Independent Labour Party, 1914-1939 (2020), He is Associate Editor of Labor History, and has been President of the Society for the Study of Labour History since 2013.

Joan Allen is Chair of the Society for the Study of Labour History. She has been a member of SSLH since the early 1990s, serving as Secretary as well as Editor of Labour History Review. She was formerly Head of History at the University of Newcastle, and has published widely on the intersection between British radicalism, Irish nationalism and the popular press. Her most recent work is a co-authored chapter on Quaker women and radicalism in R. Healey and C. Spencer (eds) Quaker Women 1800-1920 Pennsylvania State UP, 2023. She is particularly interested in the history of Chartism and has been co-convenor of the annual Chartist Studies conference since the mid-1990s.

Quentin Outram is a historian of the British coal industry. He studied economics at Cambridge University and has been teaching economics and economic history at Leeds University ever since. He has had a rich and varied research career covering all sorts of topics from profit-related pay through strikes and lockouts, the economics of famine and warfare in Eritrea and Liberia, the coalowners in the 1920s and the General Strike, the emotional history of the Featherstone massacre, and the moral economy of the rich. He is now the Secretary of the SSLH and is the Book Review Editor of the Society’s journal, the Labour History Review.

Dr Dave Lyddon is an honorary fellow (formerly senior lecturer) in industrial relations at Keele University. Founding editor in 1996 of the journal Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, he has co-authored Glorious Summer: Class Struggle in Britain, 1972 (2001) and co-edited Strikes around the World, 1968–2005 (2007). He has published many articles on contemporary and historical strike movements, most recently ‘Three Hundred Years of British Strikes’ (2023) (LINK?) and A Short History of Resistance to Anti-Strike Laws (2023). He is SSLH treasurer.

Dr Janette Martin is the Research and Learning Manager at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, Manchester. In addition to her strategic lead on research, public engagement and teaching, she curates the Modern History archive collections. These include the Manchester Guardian archive, Women’s Suffrage collections, Anti-Slavery materials and a whole lot of textiles, engineering and chemical collections. Her research interests are nineteenth-century radicalism and oratory. She is currently working with Dr Rebecca Gill on republishing an edited version of an autobiography by Florence Lockwood. Lockwood was a suffragist and pacifist campaigner who lived in the Colne Valley, near Huddersfield.

Dr Sam Hyde works on the cultural history of the British labour movement, particularly its use of cartooning. His research has been published in Contemporary British History (2011), Twentieth Century Communism (2017) and Labour History Review (2020). Dr Hyde has taught at the University of Liverpool, Edge Hill University and Liverpool Hope University. He has served as Membership Secretary of the SSLH since 2018.

Dr Daniel Laqua is Associate Professor of European History at Northumbria University. He specialises in the history of international movements and organisations, with work that covers the transnational efforts of socialists, anarchists, pacifists, humanitarians, student activists as well as various other groups. He is the author of Activism across Borders since 1870: Causes, Campaigns and Conflicts in and beyond Europe (London, 2023), The Age of Internationalism and Belgium, 1880–1930: Peace, Progress and Prestige and a variety of articles and book chapters. He has also edited a range of books and special journal issues. For further details, see https://researchportal.northumbria.ac.uk/en/persons/daniel-laqua.

Paul Corthorn is Professor of Modern British History at Queen’s University Belfast. He has worked extensively on the politics of the Left and on various aspects of the Cold War in Britain. His first book, In the Shadow of the Dictators: The British Left in the 1930s, was published in 2006. He is co-author of The Politics of Consumer Credit in the UK, 1938-1992 (Oxford University Press, 2018) and author of Enoch Powell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Britain (Oxford University Press, 2019). Paul Corthorn has been joint editor of the Labour History Review since 2012.

Peter Gurney is joint editor of the Labour History Review.

Mark Crail is an independent researcher focusing on the Chartist movement of the 1830s and 1840s. A journalist by background, he runs the Chartist Ancestors website, and has been a speaker at Chartism Day events. He is also the author of Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors (2009). He edits the SSLH website, co-edits its members’ newsletter, and manages the Society’s social media.

Neville Kirk is Emeritus Professor of Labour and Social History at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has taught and researched in the UK, North America and Australia and published extensively in the fields of modern British, comparative and transnational labour history. His most recent publications are A Nation in Crisis: Division Conflict and Capitalism in the United Kingdom (Bloomsbury 2023) and British Society and its Three Crises: From 1970s Globalisation to the Financial Crash of 2007-8 and the Onset of Brexit 2016 (Liverpool University Press, February 2024). He is the editor of LUP’s Studies in Labour History series.

Meirian Jump is a member of the SSLH Executive Committee.

Keith Gildart is Professor of Labour and Social History at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. In a previous life he was a coal miner working underground in Wales between 1985-1992. He was educated by the National Union of Mineworkers and the universities of Manchester and York. He has published widely in the fields of labour, political, social and cultural history. His first book was North Wales Miners: A Fragile Unity, 1945-1996 (University of Wales Press, 2001). More recently he has published books on working class culture and popular music including Images of England through Popular Music 1955-1976 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and Keeping the Faith: A History of Northern Soul (Manchester University Press, 2020). He is a long-term Editor of the Dictionary of Labour Biography (Palgrave Macmillan).

Jennifer Reid is a performer of nineteenth century street song from Manchester and Lancashire dialect. After volunteering at Chetham’s Library and the Working Class Movement Library, Jennifer completed an Advanced Diploma in Local History at Oxford University. Jennifer plays the character of Barb in Shane Meadows’ period drama The Gallows Pole and she has recently supported Pulp and John Cooper Clarke, latterly for Chanel’s prestigious Metiers d’Art show. She consults with museums and heritage groups, delivers folk art workshops in the community and speaks on and sings on the subject. She will be published by Routledge this year.

Matthew Roberts is Associate Professor of Modern British History at Sheffield Hallam University. He works on the history of popular politics, protest, commemoration and the history of emotions, and is the author of Chartism, Commemoration and the Cult of the Radical Hero (2019) and Democratic Passions: The Politics of Feeling in British Popular Radicalism, 1809–48 (2022). He is a member of the editorial board of Labour History Review.

Dr Joe Stanley teaches research and study skills at the University of Leeds. Alongside this, he is a historian of eighteenth and nineteenth century economic and social history. He has published on popular protest, living standards, and the development of Yorkshire miners’ trade unionism in the late eighteenth century. He is a member of the SSLH sub-committee that organises the annual Chartism Day conference.

Nicole Robertson is Associate Professor in Modern British History at Sheffield Hallam University. Her publications include those on women and clerical work, the co-operative movement and grassroots activism, consumerism and the Labour Party. She recently co-edited 20th Century Britain: Economic, Cultural and Social Change (3rd edition, 2022) with John Singleton and Avram Taylor. She is currently researching white-collar unions and redundancy in the service sector.

Dr Mike Mecham is Honorary Research Fellow at St Mary’s University, London. He is an historian of the Irish labour movement and author of William Walker: Social Activist & Belfast Labourist, 1870-1918 (Umiskin Press, 2019). He represents Irish labour history interests on the SSLH EC and is also a member of the Welsh and Scottish Societies. He was previously Director, Latin America, at the international think-tank Chatham House, researching human rights, refugee law, conflict and reconciliation processes.

Mike Sanders is Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Manchester.  He is interested in the relationships between literature, culture and the working-class movement with a particular emphasis on Chartism.  His publications include, The Poetry of Chartism: Politics, Aesthetics, History (2009.  He was a co-investigator on the Piston, Pen & Press project which explored the relationship between the industrial working-class and literary culture in Scotland and Northern England from the 1840s to the 1910s.  Since 2015 he has been a Trustee for the General Federation of Trades Unions Educational Trust.

Gregory Billam is a PhD candidate at Edge Hill University focusing on the British and Australian communist parties during the early Cold War period. He is the winner of the SSLH’s Postgraduate Essay Prize 2022 and has since been elected to the Society’s EC. He co-edits the Society’s newsletter and is also a member of the Socialist History Society.

Jenny Mabbott is Head of Collections and Engagement at People’s History Museum (PHM) in Manchester. She has responsibility for the museum’s collections, archive, conservation studio, events, exhibitions and engagement activities. Since joining PHM in 2017, Jenny has overseen a range of co-curated programmes including those exploring the fight for LGBT+ rights (2017), the centenary of the Representation of the People Act (2018), the bicentenary of the Peterloo Massacre (2019), Migration (2020/21) and disabled people’s rights and activism (2022/23). Jenny previously worked as Museum Manager at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum and Collections Officer at Wigan Heritage Service.

Edda Nicolson is a member of the SSLH Executive Committee.

Jim Phillips is a member of the SSLH Executive Committee.