Proffessor Katrina Navickas In Conversation with Daniel Frost
For our first event of the year we welcome Proffessor Katrina Navickas to the shop to discuss what is an increasingly urgent political issue in our current cultural climate. Her recent book, Contested Commons is a radical history of the increasing restrictions against protest in England’s public spaces. The work is a gripping overview of increasingly restrictive policing and legislation against protest in public spaces. It tells the long history of contests over Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Cable Street and Kinder Scout, as well as sites in towns and rural areas across the country. Navickas reveals how protesters claimed these spaces as their own commons, resisting their continuing enclosure and exclusion by social and political elites. She investigates famous and less well-known demonstrations and protest marches, from early democracy, trade union movements and the Suffragettes to anti-fascist, Black rights and environmental campaigners in more recent times. Contested Commons offers positive as well as troubling lessons on how we protect the right to protest.

Katrina Navickas is Professor of History at the University of Hertfordshire. She is the author of Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 1789–1848 (2016) and Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798–1815 (2009). She will be joined in conversation with Daniel Frost. They will discuss the book and its themes for around 45 minutes, followed by a open discussion with the audience.

As always, tickets are priced on a sliding scale. If you are unable to pay for a ticket please do not hesitate to contact us at shop@housmans.com, and a free ticket will be made available.

If you choose ‘book +entry’ your copies of the book will be available to collect on the evening. If you would like to collect it earlier, or arrange for delivery, please contact us (postage is £2.95). Telephone 020 7837 4473 or email shop@housmans.com.

Doors Open at 6:45pm, Event Starts 7:00.