Profile of Dr Peter Shapely

Name:

Dr Peter Shapely

Position:

Lecturer in Modern History

Email:

his401@bangor.ac.uk

Location:

Room 227.2 Main Arts

Phone:

01248 382148

Teaching

BA

Contemporary Political Issues
Nazi State
Power and Authority in the Modern City
Twentieth Century Europe
Poverty, Society and the State

MA

Identity and the Victorian City

Research

Peter Shapely is modern and contemporary British urban historian. Previous research has focused on voluntary charities, urban power relations, policy creation and implementation and local governance. Current research interests cover three topic areas:

1. The main research project is entitled ‘Public and Private Sector Partnerships and the Emergence of the Entrepreneurial City. Financed by a British Academy grant, this research examines city centre development projects in British post-war cities. The concept of the entrepreneurial city emerged in the 1980s as the role of local government changed with the growth of public-private partnerships or coalitions which aimed to secure grants for development projects. Image and marketing are central features of the new approach which also places greater emphasis on service and property-led regeneration. Cities developed structures and strategies to attract investment for development projects through public/private/community partnerships. There was a greater emphasis on neo-liberal solutions and strategies and a reduction in the role of the state in urban development programmes.

This, allegedly, marked the end of old style Fordism, and municipal socialism, the models for much of the twentieth century. But this is a simplistic explanation of the process. The very notion of the entrepreneurial city is not just a neo-liberal crusade to roll back the frontiers of the state. The fact remained that local government was still at the centre of the process. To view this as a shift from municipal socialism towards a Thatcherite approach is to overlook the complex historical development of local government in the twentieth century. Local authorities developed policies throughout the twentieth century which were designed to raise the profile and image of their areas and to attract private investment and support industry and commerce. Many policies were developed in collaboration with local business.

While there are a number of contemporary accounts of the post-1987 period in Britain, there are no historical studies looking at continuities in development and policy strategies. This project looks at power and policy by examining the potential links in the role of local government and the private sector from the late 1950s through to the early 1970s.

2. My second area of current research is concerned with urban identity and civic pride. This develops ideas from the project on the entrepreneurial city. It looks at the shared public rhetoric of the 1960s (supported as it was by local authorities, developers and the press), which gave expression to grand notions of civic pride and boasts from each city that their development plans were the biggest and the best. Although it was specifically concerned with the dreams that accompanied the redevelopment schemes (dreams that rapidly came crashing down), the language parallels the rhetoric employed since the rise of urban Victorian Britain. It forms part of a process of creating and recreating notions of urban identity. This is a topic which remains unexplored. To help develop these ideas an AHRB Networks bid has been submitted with Nick Hayes (Nottingham). If successful, this will lead to three inter-related workshops being held in the first half of 2010.

3. The final area of research looks at civil society in post-war Britain. It further develops research on tenant groups, placing the research into a broader context. Interest in the topic led to a successful bid to hold a joint session with Sebastian Haumann (Technische Universität Darmstadt) on ‘Urban Governance Since 1945: State, Welfare and Civic Society’ at the EUHA in Lyon. A subsequent paper was given at the ‘Perspectives on the voluntary sector’ workshop held at the British Academy in March.

Publications

Books

The Politics of Housing: Power, Policy and Consumers, Manchester University Press, October 2007, pp.i-vii, 1-234.
Charity and Power in Nineteenth Century Manchester, Manchester, 2000, pp. i-vii, 1-151.
Reconfiguring the Recipient: Historical Perspectives on the Negotiation of Medicine, Charity and Mutual Aid, jointly edited volume with Prof. Anne Borsay, Ashgate, Aldershot, April 2007, pp. i-x, 1-269.
Joint Introduction, pp. 1-10.
Chapter, ‘The Co-operative Men’s Guild and the limits of mutual aid,’ pp. 225-243.

Articles

‘Council wars: city v county and the overspill struggles, 1945-1971’, chapter in Urban Life and Politics, ed., B. Doyle, Newcastle, 2007, pp. 99-115.
‘Tenants Arise’. Consumerism, tenants and the challenge to council authority in Manchester’, Social History, 31, 1, 2006, pp. 60-78. Grade A rated journal.
‘Civic culture and housing policy in Manchester, 1945-1979,’ joint article with Duncan Tanner and Andy Walling, Twentieth Century British History. 15, 4, 2004, pp. 410-434. Grade A rated journal.
‘The press and the system built developments of inner city Manchester, 1960s-1980s’, Manchester Region History Review, 2004, pp. 30-39.
‘Urban charity, class relations and social cohesion: charitable responses to the Cotton Famine’, Urban History, 28, 1, 2001, pp. 46-64. Grade A rated journal.
‘Charity and Parliamentary Candidates in Manchester: A Consideration of Electoral and Charity Fields and the Social Basis of Power’, International Review of Social History, May 1999, pp. 1-21. Grade A rated journal.
‘Charity and Leadership: Charitable Image and the Manchester Man’, Journal of Social History, September 1998, pp. 157-177. Grade A rated journal.
‘Saving and Salvation’, Chapter in T.Wyke, ed., The Church in Cottonopolis, Manchester 1997, pp. 72-84.
‘Henshaw’s Blind Asylum and the Charity Market’, Manchester Region History Review, 1994, pp. 54-60.

Other Publications

‘Social housing and tenant participation’, History and Policy web article, April 2008.
‘The housing crisis,’ BBC History Magazine, April 2008, pp. 18-19.
‘Work and Work Ethics’, essay in Encyclopaedia of European Social History, New York, 2001.
Encyclopaedia of the European Left, contributions on Jim Callaghan, Ernest Bevin, the General Strike, the Left in Ireland.
DNB Contributions

Research – Environment

Selection of Papers at Recent Conferences/Seminar Programmes

‘Perspectives on the voluntary sector’, British Academy, 20 March 2009. Invited to participate.
Clone towns? The High Street in historical perspective, History and Governance Research Institute, ‘”Ours is bigger than yours!” Civic pride and the 1960s shopping precinct’, Wolverhampton University, 10-11 September.
Comparative History of European Cities, 9th International Conference on Urban History, ‘Urban Governance since 1945: State, Welfare and Civic Society,’ Lyon, 27th - 30th August 2008.
Public Versus Private Planning: Themes, Trends and Tensions, .International Planning History Society Conference, ‘Ours is bigger than yours!’ Planning, civic pride and the 1960s shopping precinct’, Chicago 14 July 2008.
Oxford Brookes, plenary paper on ‘Reconfiguring the recipient,’ February 29 February 2008. Invited paper.
Cambridge University, Economic and Social History seminar series, ‘Civic culture and policy in the post-war city’, 13 March 2008. Invited paper.
Beauty in the City Conference, Tours, November, 2007.
Urban Europe in Comparative Perspective, European Urban Historian Association, Stockholm August 2006.
Voluntary Action in Britain, Annual CCBH Summer Conference, London 29 June 2006.
England V Wales, Bangor September 2005.
Elizabeth Gaskell Conference, Manchester July 2005.
New Directions in Twentieth Century Political History, London April 2005

Invited to take part in The History of Parliament beyond 1832: A Colloquium and Consultation, January 2007.
Invited to take part in What's Wrong with English Local Democracy? Can looking back help to move it forward? British Academy July 2007