CFP: On the night shift: New perspectives on night work since 1900

Call for Working Papers

On the night shift: New perspectives on night work since 1900

Newcastle University, School of History, Classics and Archaeology

Armstrong Building

September 11th, 2025

Today, around 8.7 million people in the UK work night shifts. While this work is largely unseen, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the centrality of these essential workers. Cleaners, nurses, doctors, policeman, truck drivers, and factory workers all make up a work force who keep the modern 24/7 economy running by night. In recent years, new research has demonstrated that night working has significant negative health effects. While people have always worked at night, the phenomenon of night work and shift work accelerated rapidly in the years following the First World War. The expansion of the capitalist economy into the realm of the night became normalized in the early twentieth century and necessitated by industrial wars. The health and psychological complications of working at night became an increasing focus for doctors and scientists in the 1970s, particularly in light of the development of chronobiology. Nevertheless, working at night remains a marginalized subject in history, sociology and geography.  

The aim of this workshop is to bring together interdisciplinary thinking about working at night in a variety of period, contexts, and disciplinary perspectives. We will ask: What can the critical interrogation of night work can tell us about categories of class, gender and race? Who is doing night work in different period? How did medical professionals and scientists interpret the physical and psychological costs of night work in the 20th century? What coping mechanisms do contemporary might shift workers use to manage the physical and mental demands of night labour?

Topics might include:

• Labour histories of the night

• Medical and scientific perspectives on sleep and night work

• Environmental approaches to the night-time work place

• Night work and its physical and psychological effects

• Class, gender and racial hierarchies of working at night

• Night work and the contemporary gig economy

• Night shifts and mothering/caring

Note that the call is for ‘working papers’ – these will be short, 15-minute interventions that can be works in progress or even plans for future work. We welcome the participation of established as well as early career scholars and postgraduate students.

Catering, including lunch, will be provided, however there is not a budget available for travel and accommodation fees. Places are limited. Please send abstracts of 150 words as well as a short biography to Dr Kristin Hussey, Newcastle University by 21st July. Kristin.hussey@newcastle.ac.uk