Dr Shirin Hirsch

I am a historian based jointly at MMU and the People’s History Museum. I lead on developing this partnership between the museum and the university. Co-production shapes my research and I am involved in exhibitions, public events and networks with artists, trade unions, museums and schools.

I am in the early stages of writing a book on anti-racism in post-war British history with a focus on resistance from below. To support this, in October 2022 I start a short fellowship at UCL Special Collections where I will be researching anti-racist school student strikes in 1980s Britain. In term two I am running a new undergraduate module Beyond Windrush: Race, migration and resistance in Modern Britain. 

I have worked on a number of collaborative projects, including a project with a Manchester pub to remember Len Johnson and the breaking of the ‘colour bar’ in the Old Abbey Taphouse in 1953. In 2018 I wrote a book called In the Shadow of Enoch Powell: Race, locality and resistance and co-organised an exhibition and school project on this in Wolverhampton.  

I contribute regularly to the media on questions of race, migration and the labour movement and in 2022 I was selected as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. 

I am interested in supervising PhDs that connect with my research on histories of race and class, and projects that engage with the rich collection of the People’s History Museum.