Event Details

The Iredell Lecture is an annual public lecture organised by History and Law.

Our speaker, Professor Claire Langhamer, is Director of the Institute of Historical Research, London. She is a social and cultural historian of modern Britain who specializes in the history of everyday life.

The talk will be preceded by a drinks reception from 5.15pm.

Work is one of the defining features of human existence and a connection with it usually dominates adult life. Very few people can avoid having a relationship with work at some point in their lives, and this relationship can be deeply emotional, exercising a sustained impact on personal well-being and mood. How people feel about their job can frame their sense of self and other people. How feelings are managed at work can impact productivity and morale. When feeling codes are transgressed, the law may become the arbiter of workplace emotion. And emotional capacity and skill can itself be a valuable commodity called upon to help control, mobilise or understand the feelings of others. This lecture starts from the premise that past working lives were as feelings-laden as present working lives – sometimes more so – and often in unexpected ways. Drawing on autobiographical writing from the Mass Observation Archive, it considers feelings about work, feelings at work, feeling as work and the impact of work on feeling, at key moments since the Second World War. It will argue that the spaces, things, people, and processes encountered by everyday workers have long been deeply emotional.