Conveners: Christina von Hodenberg (QMUL), Bernhard Rieger (UCL), Felix Römer (GHIL)

Venue: German Historical Institute London

Workshop in cooperation with University College London and Queen Mary University London

During the protracted postwar boom and beyond, Western European societies underwent fundamental changes that resulted in new concepts of social policy and the social. Economic transformations underpinned these processes through globalization, new forms of employment and the growth of the service sector. To highlight the dynamics between state, economy and society on the one hand and the search for new frameworks of the social on the other, this workshop focuses on three prominent themes: the family and intergenerational relations; work and unemployment; and social inequality. As analysing the links between social change and new social categories poses conceptual and methodological challenges, the workshop adopts an interdisciplinary approach to facilitate exchanges between historians and scholars who have addressed this theme in neighbouring disciplines. Our aim is to develop and refine analytical frameworks that put historians in a position to (re-)write the recent social history of Europe from interdisciplinary perspectives.

Conference programme (PDF file)