With a growing awareness of class-based inequality, Brexit, and a new willingness to discuss working-class issues, the next conference of the Working-Class Studies Association will be held in the UK in September 2019.

In its fifteen year history, this will be the first time the Working-Class Studies Association will hold its conference outside its heartland of the USA. This conference aims to build and consolidate work being carried out currently in the UK and Europe with the USA and elsewhere in the world.

Working-Class Studies as a field seeks to bring together academics, activists, artists and others interested in working-class issues and themes. As an interdisciplinary field, it brings together sociologists, literary scholars, anthropologists, geographers, historians, cultural studies scholars, poets and economists amongst others. We welcome proposals for individual papers, panels and other forms of representation.

Author Lisa Blower will be attending the event as part of a round table discussion, ‘ Being a Working-Class Writer’ alongside Sarah Attfield and Jenifer Vernon. To see the full conference programme click here.

Lisa is author of It’s Gone Dark Over Bill’s Mother’s (Myriad, 2019), a fabulous collection of her award-winning short stories dominated by the working-class matriarch.

The conference will be held at the University of Kent and run from 3rd – 6th September. To register, head HERE.