New Left Histories Seminar

The New Left Seminar series revisits and revitalizes the intellectual and political contributions of the New Left through a transnational and interdisciplinary framework. It takes up both dimensions of the New Left’s legacy: the history of the New Left as an intellectual and political movement, and the methodological interventions it inspired within the discipline of history. It considers the contributions of key New Left intellectuals and the movement’s broader epistemological implications and, by adopting a transnational perspective, it seeks to illuminate historical change shaped by cross-cultural encounters, asymmetrical power relations and shared struggles in the modern world.

New Left Seminar Conveners

• Madeleine Davis (Queen Mary University of London)
• Christos Efstathiou (University of Birmingham)
• Marzia Maccaferri (Queen Mary University of London)
• Joseph Viscomi (Birkbeck, University of London)

The seminars are facilitated by the Raphael Samuel History Centre, a partnership between Queen Mary University of London and Birkbeck, University of London.

Events

Call for papers for a workshop to be held on Thursday 5 and Friday 6 November 2026 at Queen Mary University of London. More information here.

The seminar series is being planned for the year 2026-27, in partnership with the Association for the Study of Modern Italy.

Past Events

5 February 2026 "Emotional Anarchists"? The anarchic turn in the first British New Left - scope, limits, and missed opportunities
Sophie Scott-Brown (Institute of Intellectual History, University of St Andrews)

5 March 2026 ‘The Silences of Christopher Hill’
Mike Braddick (University of Oxford)

9 April 2026 ‘A. ‎L. Morton, British Communism, and the New Left’
James Crossley (University of Cambridge)