Staff Profiles
Dr Jack Hepworth
Lecturer in Public History
- Email: jack.hepworth@ncl.ac.uk
- Address: School of History, Classics & Archaeology
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
Dr Jack Hepworth is Lecturer in Public History in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology.
Jack previously taught at the University of Central Lancashire, Newcastle University (three spells), and St Catherine’s College, Oxford, where he was a Junior Research Fellow in History. He has also worked as a Research Associate on Impact Case-Studies based at Newcastle University, Nottingham Trent University, and the University of Central Lancashire.
As a public historian of modern Britain and Ireland, Jack researches three cognate themes:
- Difficult public histories of conflict, trauma, or political defeat
- The memory and afterlives of contentious politics in diaspora communities
- Complex intellectual and affective trajectories in social movements
Jack’s first monograph, ‘The age-old struggle’: Irish republicanism from the Battle of the Bogside to the Belfast Agreement, 1969-1998 was published by Liverpool University Press in 2021. His second book, ‘Preparing for power’: the Revolutionary Communist Party and its curious afterlives, 1976-2020 was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2023.
Qualifications
BA MA, University of Durham
PhD, Newcastle University
My two monographs examine strategic realignment, compromise, and contested memory in radical social movements – namely Irish republicanism and British leftism – since the global 1968. Both books analyse how political ideas and their contexts, from the local to the international, are commemorated and projected to wider publics for political purposes. Combining archival research and innovative oral history methodologies, both books analyse how activists configure their networks, and how they retrospectively strive for ‘composure’ when forming life narratives, establishing commemorative practices, and dealing with difficult pasts.
Peer-reviewed articles have featured in Public History Review, Oral History, International Journal of the History of Sport, Irish Studies Review, Irish Political Studies, Contemporary British History, and Immigrants and Minorities. I have also written for, inter alia, History Today, the Times Literary Supplement, History & Policy, The Conversation, History Ireland, and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Published with Liverpool University Press in 2021, my first monograph (‘The age-old struggle’: Irish republicanism from the Battle of the Bogside to the Belfast Agreement, 1969-1998) explores how Irish republicans positioned themselves in transnational cycles of protest. Drawing upon wide-ranging activist literature and twenty-five interviews with republican ex-combatants, ‘The age-old struggle’ examined the movement’s internal dynamics, especially assessing how republicans reworked generational motifs of Northern Ireland’s civil rights period for the peace process of the 1990s.
My second book (‘Preparing for power’: the Revolutionary Communist Party and its curious afterlives, 1976-2020) was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2023. 'Preparing for power' analyses how a specific New Left milieu diagnosed a crisis of revolutionary politics from the late 1970s. Tracing the network’s subsequent evolution to Brexit and opposition to Covid-19 lockdowns, the book illuminates a wider constellation of post-1968 ideological and strategic debates, and their continual controversies. Like my first book, ‘Preparing for power’ combines extensive documentary research and oral history analysis.
My current project is Conflicted Identities: Irish Diaspora Activism and Memory. Conflicted Identities is a public history project examining collective memory of migration and minorities in the late twentieth century. In partnership with Irish community centres in Liverpool, Leeds, and Newcastle, Conflicted Identities analyses how emigrant networks:
- Navigated the politics of the Northern Ireland conflict
- Interacted with the global Irish diaspora
- Forged solidarities and negotiated tensions with Britain’s other emigrant and ethnic-minority communities
Combining archival research, oral histories, and community engagement, Conflicted Identities examines how historical Irish diaspora activism has been contested, commemorated, and presented to wider publics. The project generates substantive outputs for a REF Impact Case Study, including community archives, curated exhibitions, witness seminars, and interactive digital resources. Conflicted Identities also forms the basis of a prospective monograph project.
I am currently preparing an article analysing public histories of the Good Friday Agreement’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Amid the current crises of Northern Ireland’s peace process, the article delineates how commemorative events and museum exhibitions – especially at Ulster Museum and the Imperial War Museums – have become increasingly critical of the Agreement’s limitations and legacies.
As a Research Assistant, I have led public history partnerships for REF Impact Case Studies, collaborating with community, diaspora, and heritage organisations. Project partnerships include:
- Foodbank Histories: A partnership with Newcastle West End Foodbank and Northern Cultural Projects CIC, Foodbank Histories produced an executive report for the Foodbank’s CEO and trustees. The report was cited by Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Poverty and Human Rights.
- Voices of ’68: I assisted Professor Chris Reynolds (Nottingham Trent University) gauging and recording Impact from his project, which resulted in a permanent exhibition at Ulster Museum.
- Windrush Lives in Lancashire: A community history partnership with Preston Black History Group and UCLan’s Institute for Black Atlantic Research. With Professor Alan Rice, I co-authored the project publication, which was highly commended by the Alan Ball Local History Awards and distributed to civic authorities and policymakers. Project outputs contributed to an exhibition at Lancaster City Museum.
With Emma Dewhirst (Liverpool University), I organised a two-day workshop at Newcastle University on 4-5 October 2019: Rebellion, Revolution and Resistance in the Twentieth Century: Political Violence, Social Movements and Class. View a report on this event here.
I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a member of the British Association for Irish Studies, Oral History Society, and Society for the Study of Labour History.
At the University of Central Lancashire, Newcastle University, and the University of Oxford, I have taught twenty-five modules and supervised forty undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations, spanning public history, oral history, and historiographical theory, across modern Irish, British, and European history.
At Newcastle, I currently teach public history, historiography, and research skills. I am Module Leader for three public history modules across the undergraduate and postgraduate programme, and I am supervising eight final-year dissertations.
Modules
HIS1100 Evidence and Argument ('A vanished people'? The lives and legacies of Irish emigrants in post-war Britain)
HIS1104 Introduction to Public History (Module Leader)
HIS3020 Writing History
HIS3036 Public History in Practice (Module Leader)
HIS8121 Projects in Global Public History (Module Leader)
SEL3377: Dissertation in English Literature & History
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Articles
- Hepworth J. 'We are grateful for the opportunity to act as ambassadors for our club and our country': sporting hospitality during the Northern Ireland conflict. International Journal of the History of Sport 2023, 40(5), 415-435.
- Hepworth J. 'Progress will not occur if we continually adopt positions of principle': Irish republican prisoners and strategic reorientation, c.1976-1998. Irish Political Studies 2023, 38(2), 161-188.
- Hepworth J. A union severed? Loyalists in Irish Free State border counties, 1922-1927. History Ireland 2023, 31(1), 38-40.
- Hepworth J. Ulster's 'lost counties'. History Today 2022, 72(12), 40-49.
- Hepworth J. 'The moral rearmament of imperialism': the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Northern Ireland conflict, and the new world order, 1981-1994. Contemporary British History 2022, 36(4), 591-621.
- Hepworth J. The 'good old IRA': remembering republican veterans after 1969. History Ireland 2022, 30(2), 40-43.
- Hepworth J. Take no prisoners: an incident in the Anglo-Irish War, and what it meant. Times Literary Supplement 2022, (6224).
- Hepworth J. Beyond the "republican family": biography, genealogy, and intergenerational memory in twenty-first-century Ireland. Irish Studies Review 2022, 29(4), 425-443.
- Atkinson-Phillips A, Fisch S, Hepworth J. Experiences of place and loss at Newcastle West End Foodbank. North East History 2020, 51, 163-179.
- Hepworth J. Britain's first migrant strike: labour militancy and racial politics at Courtaulds, Preston, 1965. North West Labour History 2020, (45), 15-20.
- Hepworth J. Between Isolation and Integration: Religion, Politics, and the Catholic Irish in Preston, C.1829-1868. Immigrants and Minorities 2020, 38(1-2), 77-104.
- Hepworth J. '"We're getting the victory we fought for", we were told': retrospective subjective analysis in oral histories of Irish republicanism. Oral History 2020, 48(2), 68-79.
- Hepworth J, Atkinson-Philllips A, Fisch S, Smith G. “I was not aware of the hardship”: Foodbank Histories from North-East England. Public History Review 2019, 26, 1-25.
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Authored Books
- Hepworth J. 'Preparing for power': the Revolutionary Communist Party and its curious afterlives, 1976-2020. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.
- Hepworth J. 'The Age-Old Struggle': Irish republicanism from the Battle of the Bogside to the Belfast Agreement, 1969-1998. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021.
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Book Chapter
- Hepworth J. The strategic transformation of Provisional Irish republicanism, 1979-98. In: Laura McAtackney & Máirtín Ó Catháin, ed. The Routledge Handbook of the Northern Ireland Conflict and Peace. Abingdon: Routledge, 2023, pp.228-241.
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Edited Book
- Hepworth J, Rice A, Preston Black History Group, ed. 'England is my home': Windrush lives in Lancashire. Preston: University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), 2022.
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Online Publications
- Rice A, Hepworth J. Voices of Preston's Windrush generation - when I first survived, I said: 'Really? I thought there were no slums in this place!'. The Conversation Trust, 2023. Available at: theconversation.com/voices-of-prestons-windrush-generation-when-i-first-arrived-i-said-really-i-thought-there-were-no-slums-in-this-place-206455.
- Hepworth J. The recent Legacy Bill cannot hope to address Northern Ireland's difficult, unresolved past. 2023. Available at: historiansforhistory.wordpress.com/2023/07/18/the-recent-legacy-bill-cannot-hope-to-address-northern-irelands-difficult-unresolved-past-by-jack-hepworth/.
- Hepworth J. Stalker, John (1939-2019). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000380937.
- Hepworth J. Devolution and its discontents. London: King's College London, 2022. Available at: historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/devolution-and-its-discontents.
- Hepworth J. Loyalist rioting reframes the perennial question: who governs Northern Ireland?. London: History & Policy, 2021. Available at: https://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/loyalist-rioting-reframes-the-perennial-question-who-governs-northern-ireland.
- Hepworth J. Anglo-Irish relations in mid-nineteenth-century Preston. Preston History, 2020. Available at: https://prestonhistory.com/subjects/anglo-irish-relations-in-mid-nineteenth-century-preston/.
- Hepworth J. Writing the “troubles”: purpose and practice. 2019. Available at: https://writingthetroublesweb.wordpress.com/2019/07/08/purpose-and-practice/.
- Hepworth J. Isolated or integral? Irish workers in Preston, c.1829-1867. Irish Diaspora Histories Network, 2018. Available at: https://irishdiasporahistory.wordpress.com/2018/10/01/isolated-or-integral-irish-workers-in-preston-c-1829-1867/.
- Hepworth J. The heterogeneity and evolution of Irish republicanism, c.1969-c.1994. NEE-HIP, 2017. Available at: https://neehip.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/the-heterogeneity-and-evolution-of-irish-republicanism-c-1969-c-1994/.
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Reports
- Hepworth J. Industrial strife put race relations in the spotlight. 2020. Lancashire Post.
- Atkinson-Phillips A, Fisch S, Hepworth J, Smith G. Foodbank histories: solidarity and mutual aid in the past and the present. King’s College London, 2020. History & Policy.
- Hepworth J. Foodbank histories: Newcastle West End Foodbank - an executive report. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2019.
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Reviews
- Hepworth J. Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland. The Public Historian 2024, 46(1), 182-184.
- Hepworth J. Dieter Reinisch, Learning behind bars: how IRA prisoners shaped the peace process in Ireland. Oral History 2023.
- Hepworth J. Diasporic subjects: migrant identities and twentieth-century Ireland. Irish Studies Review 2023, 31(2), 298-303.
- Hepworth J. Book review: Eve Morrison, Kilmichael: the life and afterlife of an ambush. The Irish Story 2022.
- Hepworth J. Edward Burke, An army of tribes: British Army cohesion, deviancy, and murder in Northern Ireland. Studi Irlandesi: A Journal of Irish Studies 2020, 10, 363-365.
- Hepworth J. The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles by Margaret M. Scull [Book review]. Twentieth Century British History 2020, 31(4), 591-592.
- Hepworth J. The troubles in Northern Ireland and theories of social movements. Irish Political Studies 2018, 33(1), 160-163.