Reflections on Milton Keynes, sunshine, the Annual meeting and Coleman Prize

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Against the backdrop of an unseasonably warm Milton Keynes, and the potential of an easier route to the final for England after their defeat to Belgium in the group stage of the 2018 Football World Cup the night before (Editors note: If there is one thing history teaches us, there is no ‘easy’ route for England to a World Cup final) the 2018 Association of Business Historians annual conference took place at the Open University on the 29th and 30th of June. This was only my second ABH conference having attended Glasgow in 2018, but I was delighted to return this year as both a presenter and chair of the Coleman prize committee. I headed to the opening sessions of the conference on Friday morning.

This year the conference theme was on ‘Pluralistic perspectives of business history: gender, class, ethnicity, religion’, certainly an all-encompassing title which prompted much interpretation and discussion throughout the conference and has hopefully pushed forward the field of business history beyond, for instance, white, wealthy middleclass men running steel companies (Like a lot of my research. Perhaps I need a new topic…) I always enjoy the opening tea and coffee of a conference. The chance to catch up with friends and colleagues from across the world and discuss past and potential future research trajectories and possible collaborations is never an opportunity to be missed. It’s also a great chance to expand your network and make new connections, which thankfully once again happened for me.

A quick shuffle through the conference guide and I was off to my first session where I was also presenting. For me there is always a twinge of disappointment when looking through the programme, knowing of all the choice on offer for a parallel session you can only choose one to view. Should we record more sessions and provide them for future viewing after the conference to delegates? Perhaps a question for another time. My first session included papers on Liverpool cotton brokers, Assam tea plantations, and a 18th Century Sheffield steel company (No prizes of guessing which of these papers was mine), which provoked a lot of cross-examination from the audience which provided potential developmental points for all involved. It was also nice to see an ABH debutant presenting in this session and getting a lot out of the questions and discussion surrounding their work. My next session included two excellent and complementary papers on shipbuilding and armaments which highlighted the value of searching out valuable and under-utilised primary sources and not taking for granted generalisations of industries based on single case studies of corporations. There seems to be a growing interest in sectoral, rather than individual firm explorations of business history.

Lunch time, and a very hungry congregation shuffle their way to the designated feeding room, only to find an army of helpers directing us in another direction. Out into the fantastically warm Milton Keynes sun, and under a cloudless sky we discover our lunch is a barbeque. Having run some 3 conferences in the past I know the value of good catering (Comments on food often make up 90% of feedback on a conference!), and the barbeque was an excellent idea, the weather certainly helping the mood of lunch-time conversations.