Emily Sharp

• History, Northumbria University
• Email: emily4.sharp@northumbria.ac.uk

My project assesses the contribution of British student activists to international solidarity campaigns across the second half of the twentieth century. Examining the anti-apartheid movement, the protests against Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile and pro-Palestinian solidarity activism, I hope to track the changing sentiments, principles, patterns and priorities in British student activism across this period. I will be utilising archival sources from the National Union of Students (NUS) and local students’ unions, as well as oral testimonies gathered from former NUS activists, to uncover the intricacies and regional dynamics within the British student movement. I also hope to demonstrate the interconnected nature of local and national campaigning, examining how such forms of activism complemented and contradicted one another and how this relationship evolved over time. This dual focus on local activism (within individual universities) and activism at the national level (within the NUS) will help us to challenge the ways that we define activism more generally and will allow us to reconsider the impact that different forms of activism can have at a regional, national and international level.

Supervisory Team: Daniel Laqua (Northumbria), Brian Ward (Northumbria), Mike Day (Friends of NUS), Davina Keen (NUS).

Start Date: October 2020