Laura Forster

Dr. Laura Forster is Lecturer in Modern History (post-1750) at the University of York's Department of History. She completed her PhD at King's College London and previously held positions at the University of Manchester, Durham University, and Birkbeck College.

Her research examines radical ideas, socialist cultures, and transnational communities in 19th-century Britain and France, with emphasis on embodied political experiences and revolutionary afterlives. Current work explores intimacy and prefigurative politics in activist spaces, using queer methodologies and public history approaches. Forster's forthcoming book The Paris Commune in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2025) analyzes how exiled Communards influenced British socialism through intellectual exchanges and symbolic memory.

Publications demonstrate consistent focus on revolutionary legacies, examining commemorative practices around the Paris Commune and transnational networks at events like the 1929 World League for Sexual Reform conference. Her interdisciplinary collaboration with Joel White in Friends in Common: radical friendship & everyday solidarities (Pluto Press, 2025) theorizes friendship as resistance under capitalism.

Teaching includes undergraduate modules on Arguments and Analysis, Historical Thinking, and Emotions, plus postgraduate training in British oppositional cultures. Public engagement includes podcasts, magazine articles, and community partnerships with Clarion clubs and miners' welfares in Northern England.