Engaging with nostalgia: personal reflections on a career thinking about the past, present and future of the past

Abstract
Nostalgia has played a large part in my career, thinking and writing. In this paper I want to reflect on how I got interested in the idea of nostalgia through the various projects I have been involved in. My career was mostly spent examining work and industries in decline. When I first began writing about nostalgia it seemed quite niche, with the little known (at the time) book by Fred Davis, Yearning for Yesterday, offering a fantastic resource for critical engagement with the field. Gradually attention to nostalgia has increased and with it the range and theoretical ideas have become more sophisticated and inter/ multi-disciplinary. I have studied nostalgia in relation to railways, mining communities, paper making, engineering and construction and brewing. I will draw on this research for this paper and develop an overarching account of how we might think with and use nostalgia.

Bio
Tim Strangleman is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, SSPSSR, University of Kent, Canterbury. He has researched and written widely on nostalgia through discussions of work identity, culture and meaning; traditional industries in decline and deindustrialisation. Tim is an historical sociologist who uses oral history and visual methods and approaches in his research. He has published articles in a range of journals including Sociology, IJURR, Sociological Review and ILWCH. He is the author of three books: (2008) Work and Society: Sociological Approaches, Themes and Methods, with Tracey Warren, Routledge; and (2004) Work Identity at the End of the Line? Privatisation and Culture Change in the UK Rail Industry, Palgrave. His latest monograph, Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. In 2021 he completed The Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies with his co-editors Christie Launius and Michele Fazio. He co-edited The Routledge International Handbook of Deindustrialisation Studies which will be published in 2025.

Programme

Scientific Committee:
Juliette Schwak, Université libre de Bruxelles (REPI)
David Berliner, Université libre de Bruxelles (LAMC)

Registration required: https://forms.office.com/e/QWh1fjxdhL?origin=lprLink

November 2nd& 3rd, 2026

Venue:
REPI Université libre de Bruxelles
Institute for European Studies – Spaak room
39 avenue Franklin Roosevelt
1050 Bruxelles