Dr Sarah Kenny

• Monday 15:00-16:00
• Tuesday 16:00-17:00

• PhD (2017), University of Sheffield
• MA, University of Sheffield
• BA (Hons)

I began working at the University of Birmingham following the submission of my PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2017. Since joining the History Department I have taught and supervised on a range of topics from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. My particular expertise is in histories of youth culture, leisure, and gender. I have maintained an active research profile, publishing on politics, youth culture, and oral history. I am currently in the process of developing my first manuscript, focusing on the development and regulation of evening leisure space for young people in post-war Britain. My research utilises space and place as a way of understanding social and cultural change in post-war Britain.

I teach on a range of undergraduate and taught postgraduate courses, including:

• Sex and Sexualities in the Modern British World, 1880-1980
• Why We Hate Politics: Social Activism in Contemporary Britain
• Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now: Britain in the 1980s
• Where There is Discord: Making Thatcher’s Britain
• A Holiday from Reality: A History of Drugs and Drug Use in Modern Britain
• George Orwell, England, and the Modern World
• Practicing History (Approaches to History)
• Practicing History B (Approaches to History)
• Public History
• Dissertation Supervision

I am primarily a social and cultural historian of youth in post-war Britain, although I have wider interests in drinking studies, urban studies, and local history. My research explores generational changes to the lived experience of young people in post-war Britain, and is particularly focused on youth culture, sexuality, space, and leisure.

I am currently writing my first book, provisionally titled ‘Unspectacular Youth? Evening Leisure Space and Youth Culture in Post-War Britain, c.1950-c.1990’, which explores the development of licensed leisure spaces and youth lifestyles. The monograph will, by discussing youth drinking, alcohol regulation and licensing, lifestyle, the night time economy, behaviour, and sexuality, bring into historical scholarship topics more frequently discussed by sociologists, ethnographers, cultural geographers, and urban studies scholars.

I am also developing my second project, which will focus on the romantic experiences of young people in post-war Britain, charting how this transformed and developed over fifty years of cultural and social change.

I am also involved in the organisation of a range of conferences and seminars. Most recently this includes the co-founding of a research partnership on the theme ‘Rethinking Disruptive Sex’ (https://twitter.com/DisruptiveSex19) with Dr Hannah J Elizabeth at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a special seminar series in the Department of History on new research in histories of gender and sexuality with Dr Zoë Thomas.