CMNH is really pleased to welcome Dr Manus McGrogan, historian, researcher, oral historian and political activist. Manus will be facilitating two oral history workshops that draw on his research and activism, as well as presenting a paper at the Centre’s seminar series on visual culture.
Manus’s work focuses on French and international social movements of the radical or global 60s, their press and propaganda. His interest in 1960s radicalism and the counter culture stems from a background in political activism and a love of art and music of the 60s.
Postgraduate work on the May 1968 events in France and their consequences led to a study of the seditious leftist paper, TOUT! (Everything!), a revolution in both form and content for the press of the day. This work featured in forums commemorating 40 and 50 years of May ’68 with publication of a book on TOUT! in 2018.
Family ties and language teaching meant that I’ve always had strong connections to France.These factors inspired my postgraduate work on the May 1968 events in France.Dr Manus McGrogan
In addition to analytical readings of the paper, the testimony of is creators and distributors proved crucial in telling the story of TOUT! Manus became an oral historian, drawing on the approach of Martin Evans and his work on underground resistance to the Algerian War in the 1950s and 60s.
His ongoing research has probed the transnational dimension of the global arc of radicalism that spanned the ‘Long ’60s’, also relying heavily on interviews with former activists of different countries. Currently he works with another group of scholars on the International Socialist History project, an oral history venture seeking to recover the memories and experiences of a disappearing generation of UK based activists of the 1960s and 70s.
