Research seminar: Writing Personal History

In this talk, Joe Moran will discuss how he writes historical scholarship in creative and personal ways. Over the last few years he has written creative non-fiction for both academic and non-academic audiences – writing that seeks to be essayistic, eclectic, voice-driven, cinematic, and filled with what the critic James Wood calls ‘off-duty detail’. More recently he has been using these methods to write about the history of his family. He will be talking especially about the process of researching and writing his article in History Workshop Journal (no. 98, Autumn 2024), ‘The Death of an Irishman: A Speculative Biography’, about the death of his grandfather in a geriatric ward in Smethwick in 1965.

Joe Moran is a Professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. His most recent books are Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness (Profile, 2107), First You Write a Sentence (Penguin, 2018) and If You Should Fail: A Book of Solace (Penguin 2020). He writes regularly for the Guardian, the TLS and other publications. His book The Lost Art of People Watching will be published by Viking in 2027.