On the night shift: New perspectives on night work since 1900

Introduction

Today, around 8.7 million people in the UK work night shifts. While this work is largely unseen, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the centrality of these essential workers. Cleaners, nurses, doctors, policeman, truck drivers, and factory workers all make up a work force who keep the modern 24/7 economy running by night. In recent years, new research has demonstrated that night working has significant negative health effects. While people have always worked at night, the phenomenon of night work and shift work accelerated rapidly in the years following the First World War. The expansion of the capitalist economy into the realm of the night became normalized in the early twentieth century and necessitated by industrial wars. The health and psychological complications of working at night became an increasing focus for doctors and scientists in the 1970s, particularly in light of the development of chronobiology. Nevertheless, working at night remains a marginalized subject in history, sociology and geography.

The aim of this workshop is to bring together interdisciplinary thinking about working at night in a variety of period, contexts, and disciplinary perspectives. We will ask: What can the critical interrogation of night work can tell us about categories of class, gender and race? Who is doing night work in different period? How did medical professionals and scientists interpret the physical and psychological costs of night work in the 20th century? What coping mechanisms do contemporary might shift workers use to manage the physical and mental demands of night labour?

Event held at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, NE1 7RU. This is an in-person event. For any queries please contact Dr Kristin Hussey, Lecturer in Environmental History, kristin.hussey@newcastle.ac.uk

Provisional Programme:

8:30 - 9:15 – Coffee and registration - ARMB 1.04

9:15 – 9.30 – Welcome from organiser - ARMB 2.16

9:30 – 10:45 Panel 1 - Working in the nighttime hospital - ARMB 2.16

Dr Sophie Panziera (Université Bretagne-Sud, Lorient) - Night-workers’ sleep: a French medical controversy in the early 20th century

Dr Kristin Hussey (Newcastle University) - Shouting patients, creaking trollies and salacious novels: Sensory environments of night nursing in the 20th century British hospital

Sarah Lowry (Royal College of Physicians) – ‘I could sleep on an ironing board’: Oral histories of House Officer jobs in the 1960s and 70s

Dr Alison Steven (Northumbria University) – Healthcare fatigue and Participatory Action Research (PAR) at the Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI)

10:45 – 11:00 Morning coffee break - ARMB 1.04

11:00 – 12:15 Panel 2 – Conflict, gender and the nighttime city - ARMB 2.16

Dr Robert Dale (Newcastle University) - Beyond Shostakovich on a Roof: Nighttime Fire Watching in Besieged Leningrad and other Soviet Cities during the Second World War

Renee Li (McGill University) - Spatial Substitutions: Bathhouses, Affective Labour, and the Biopolitical Reconfiguration of Nightlife

Dr Robert Shaw (Newcastle University) – Masculinity and the public night shift

12:15 – 13:00 Lunch - ARMB 1.04

13:00 – 14:00 Keynote - ARMB 2.16

Dr Arun Kumar (Nottingham University) - Sleep Deprivation: A History of Sleep Violence in Colonial India

14:00 – 14:45 Workshop discussion - ARMB 2.16

Dr Tiago Moreira (Durham University), Dr Kristin Hussey (Newcastle University), Dr Arun Kumar (Nottingham University), Dr Lucie Dušková (Charles University, Prague)

Chair: Dr Robert Shaw (Newcastle University)

14:45 – 15:00 Afternoon coffee break - ARMB 1.04

15:00 – 16:00 Keynote- ARMB 2.16

Dr Lucie Dušková (Charles University, Prague) - The Tangled Story of Night Work

16:00 – 17:00 Reception - ARMB 1.04