| Post: | Emeritus Professor |
| Location: | Arts A A148 |
| Email: | A.J.Howkins@sussex.ac.uk |
| Telephone numbers | |
| Internal: | 7129 |
| UK: | (01273) 877129 |
| International: | +44 1273 877129 |
Biography
Alun Howkins is Professor Emeritus in Social History. He left school at 15 and worked at a variety of manual and white collar jobs before going to Ruskin College, a trade-union college for adult students in 1968. He went from there to Oxford, where he read History and to Essex where he completed his PhD. He has written on a wide range of subjects from the paintings of Turner to the politics of the 1930s Communist Party. However his central commitment has always been and remains the history of the rural areas and especially the rural poor.
Role
Professor Emeritus in Social History
Teaching
It is difficult to explain the courses taught in one university to those working in another apart from the obvious subject based ones. In that area I have taught basic British history since1640; Irish history since 1845; the History of Social Policy 1834-1970; 'The Remaking of Rural England 1870 - 1914' (special subject) and 'Conflict and Change in English Society1900-1914 (special subject). I have also taught a wide range of what we call 'school courses'. These are interdisciplinary courses bringing together a variety of subject areas to look at common themes and are a distinctive part of the 'Sussex Profile'. In this area I have taught courses on literature, art and society in Britain between the wars; popular culture, leisure and the social order; Mass Observation and Social Investigation and English rural communities.
I have also taught on the full and part time M.A.s in History and the Master in Social Work
I have also supervised 11 Doctoral students who have completed. Their work has resulted in four single author books and many articles.
Publications
Alun Howkins has published several books including: Poor Labouring Men; Rural Radicalism in Norfolk 1872-1925, (London, Routledge, 1985); Disorder and Discipline. Popular Culture from 1550 to the Present, (With Sue Easton, et al), (London, Gower, 1988); Reshaping Rural England 1850-1925, (First ed. London, Collins Harvill 1991, Second ed., London, Routledge, 1992) and most recently The Death of Rural England: a social history of the countryside since 1900, (Routledge, 2003). He was a section editor and author of social history section of Agrarian History of England and Wales Vol. VII, (Cambridge, CUP, 2000). He is currently working on two projects, one on the enclosure of villages to the East of Oxford in the period 1850-1900 and the other on the survival of farm service in English and Welsh agriculture.
Media
Writer/presenter 'Fruitful Earth' a x 50 min documentary series on the history of British agriculture since Neolithic times . These were transmitted on BBC 2 in August 1999 and had an average audience of 1.2 million.
Writer presenter 'George and the Midget', Archive Hour, BBC Radio 4 Aug 1999.
Writer presenter 'The Village' 3x 30mins radio features BBC Radio 4. Sept 2001.
Appearances 'Nightwaves'; 'Today' 'World Tonight' 'Newsnight' - on current or recent rural problems. 'Music Matters - on popular music in past'