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Description

This exciting collection of interdisciplinary essays studies the cultural history of Coventry's global populations.

Coventry has long been a place where diverse cultures mix. Attracting workers, traders and artisans, as well as migrants, refugees and students, the city is home to an incredible range of global and local communities and yet, until now, its place in the history of English cities, urban studies, and British social history has been obscure. Global Coventry: Migration, Diaspora and Place-Making offers an insightful and novel collection of essays by historians, sociologists, geographers and community-based scholars to make the case for Coventry's significance across these disciplines.

Focusing in particular on Coventry's Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, Global Coventry contributes to histories of place-making by foregrounding race, gender, class and sexuality as essential to our understanding of the concept. The collection demonstrates how global flows of goods and people brought about major transformation to the city's landscape at the same time as illustrating how social and racialised minorities navigated their marginalisation within local, national and global structures.

Across thirteen chapters, Global Coventry provides a wide-ranging analysis of the historical and social trajectories which brought communities from all over the world to the city and reveals how these communities organised. The contributions explore topics like the hidden histories of Coventry's South Asian community, a pioneering 1970s community development project, the arrival of Chinese migrants to the city, local oral history archives, and the presence of queer refugees in the city.

If you are interested in urban studies, histories of place-making and the cultural significance of diasporic groups in modern British history, Global Coventry is essential reading.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, Dr Somak Biswas (University of Cambridge, UK), Professor Anne Gerritsen (University of Warwick, UK), Dr Aya Nassar (University of Warwick, UK), Professor Pippa Virdee (DeMontfort University, UK)
Part I: New Ways of Seeing the City
2. Since when are we global? Material traces of Coventry's global past', Professor Anne Gerritsen (Professor of History, University of Warwick, UK)
3. Local Ethnic Diversity and Unemployment in Coventry, Dr Matteo Mazzamurro (Postdoctoral Researcher, Aarhus University, Denmark)
4. 'Visual Vocabularies': Showing the Hidden Histories of South Asians in Coventry, Professor Pippa Virdee (De Montfort University, UK)
Part II: Interventions and Encounters in the City
5. The ONE MILE WALK: Dust, Holes, Frictions, and Reconciliation, Dr Aya Nassar (Durham University) and Professor Nirmal Puwar (Goldsmiths, University of London)
6. The Multiplicitous City: Race, Class, Gender and Space, Dr Tana Forrest (University of Edinburgh, UK)
7. Coventry Community Development Project: Race and Poverty in 1970s Hillfields, Dr Ben Kyneswood (Coventry University, UK)
8. Radioactive Rotis and Punjabi Women, Dr Shahnaz Akhter (University of Warwick, UK)
Part IV: Place-making in the City
9. 'Kin Wa': The Chinese Meeting Place in Coventry, 1960s-80s, Professor Pippa Virdee (De Montfort University, UK)
10. Queer Refugees in Coventry, Dr Somak Biswas (University of Cambridge, UK)
11. 'For me, Here Life is Perfect': Voices from the Lockdown Echoed by a Research-Art Response', Dr Reem Doukmak (University of Warwick, UK)
12. 'Kalmaan Coventry Diyaaan': The Quills of Coventry; Vernacular Writing in the City, Professor Virinder S. Kalra (University of Warwick, UK)

Product details

Bloomsbury Academic Test
Published Oct 29 2026
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Pages 256
ISBN 9781350519992
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations 20 bw illus
Dimensions 234 x 156 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Anne Gerritsen

Anne Gerritsen is Professor of History at the Univ…

Anthology Editor

Somak Biswas

Somak Biswas is a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fell…

Anthology Editor

Pippa Virdee

Pippa Virdee is Professor of Modern South Asian Hi…

Anthology Editor

Aya Nassar

Aya Nassar is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fello…

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