Inaugural Lecture: Professor Laura King
- Date: Wednesday 3 December 2025, 17:00 – 20:00
- Location: Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, Music
- Type: Inaugural lectures
- Cost: Free. <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/professor-laura-kings-inaugural-lecture-tickets-1952087459139?aff=oddtdtcreator">Registration required</a>.
The School of History invites you to join us for Professor King's inaugural lecture, entitled 'History is not ours: Collaboration, expertise, and history making beyond the academy.’
Who is a historian – and who is denied this status? This event will consider the place of universities in history-making today, reimagining the role of collaboration and thinking about how to resist structures which prioritise the academic and academic knowledge over other forms of expertise. This inaugural lecture will involve a talk from Laura King, Professor of Collaborative History, and a roundtable with guests Professor Fozia Bora (School of Languages, Societies and Cultures, University of Leeds), Ellie Harrison (artist and director, Polite Rebellion) and Susan Pitter (cultural heritage producer and Director of Out of Many People).
Laura King is Professor of Collaborative History at the University of Leeds. Since being awarded her PhD in 2011, she has focused on collaborating with partners and communities outside of universities, including theatre companies, artists, charities, museums, government organisations, and a range of different kinds of community groups. Her latest book, Living with the Dead (OUP, 2025), examines the place of the dead in everyday family life, and is based on a collaboration with family historians (including her own family). Previous research has focused on fatherhood, such as her book Family Men (OUP, 2015), as well as into family archives, ideas about childhood, and writing on the process of collaboration itself.
She is joined for this inaugural lecture by:
Fozia Bora
Fozia Bora is Professor of Islamic History at the University of Leeds, in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. Fozia is an expert in medieval history, specialising in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk eras in the 6th–9th Islamic centuries (12th–15th centuries CE). Her book Writing History in the Medieval Islamic World was published by Bloomsbury in 2019. More recently her work has turned to focus on the local and global histories of Muslim communities in West Yorkshire through the 'model' Somali village established in Bradford as part of the Great Exhibition of 1904.
Ellie Harrison
Ellie Harrison is a disabled performance maker and artist living in Leeds and working internationally. She is artistic director of Polite Rebellion and the acclaimed Grief Series, a sequence of seven arts projects that open up spaces to talk about bereavement and end of life. She creates a range of solo and collaborative devised performance and installation work for studios, galleries, found and public spaces. Participation is at the heart of all of her work as a performer, facilitator and mentor.
Susan Pitter
Susan Pitter is a Leeds based cultural heritage producer and partnerships specialist. She is a co founder of Out of Many People set up as 'curators of Black storytelling in the North'. Susan has conceptualised and directed several projects, collaborations and exhibitions exploring Black British narratives including 2019's Eulogy on the lives of first generation Jamaicans – still the most visited exhibition in Leeds Central Library's 140-year history.
How to attend
This event is free to attend. Please register via Eventbrite.
This event is held in-person, in the Clothworkers’ Centenery Concert Hall.
The lecture will run from approximately 5:30- 6:30pm with doors opening at 5pm. The lecture will be followed by a celebratory drinks and food reception to which all ticketholders are welcome to attend.
Image credit
A picnic basket containing food that represented stories from Laura's research and Grief Series participants, as part of Journey with Absent Friends. Image by Matt Rogers/Polite Rebellion.