Great to hear from you Kelly. Thanks for your interest!

This is a fantastic project, and these case studies and accompanying illustrations are wonderful. There are so many bad takes on pub closures, so these careful, thoughtful studies are really important. Looking forward to more of this work being published and shared @drinkingstudies.bsky.social

Thanks James!

Our case studies attempted to capture some of the diversity of pubs and the communities that they serve, across rural-urban geographies and regions. Stay tuned for future long-reads regarding closed pubs in coastal South Wales, city center Manchester, suburban Birmingham and rural Hertfordshire.

McGlynn's, Kings Cross.

An Irish pub which closed suddenly in 2023 after the death of its long term licensee. Celebrated in the media and popular with a wide-range of people, we explore the convivial qualities of this much lamented pub.

after-last-orders.lboro.ac.uk/mcglynns/

The Litten Tree, Coventry.

Part of a 1990s hybrid pub-bar-nightclub chain which collapsed in 2007, it was run independently as a budget-friendly boozer before closing in 2023. To be demolished in a city-centre regeneration scheme.

after-last-orders.lboro.ac.uk/the-litten-t...

The Three Lions, Meden Vale.

A large, multi-room 1960s pub in a former Nottinghamshire mining village, it was the village's last informal meeting space. Closed on New Years Eve 2021, it is due to make way for a 41 unit housing development.

after-last-orders.lboro.ac.uk/the-three-li...

We've just launched a website showcasing our research on pub closure!

Each 'long-read' explores the story of a closed pub and its social and cultural significance, drawing on field visits, archival research and extensive interviews with those connected to it.

Links below!

Pubs are closing at a rate of 1 per day in the UK.
@thurnellreadsoc.bsky.social and I wrote an article for @uk.theconversation.com on the negative impact of closures and what might be done to prevent the loss of these important community assets.

Drawing on our research for the @leverhulmetrust.bsky.social funded After Last Orders project, @robertdeakin.bsky.social and I share some insights into the impact of pub closures in this new article for @uk.theconversation.com theconversation.com/consolation-...

Really happy that our @jmmnews.bsky.social special issue 'conversation' is now out "A pint-sized conversation: publicans, brewers, and academics on the UK beer, pub and brewing industry" - first 50 downloads free- www.tandfonline.com/eprint/6UIG6...

Hadn't noticed this - great!

Great to see the new paper by @thurnellreadsoc.bsky.social and @robertdeakin.bsky.social covered in this weeks round up! Always good to see academic papers getting out of universities!

the pub is more often represented as a space of national cohesion, without which the ‘social fabric’ of the nation might fall apart. (4/4)

as well as their multiple forms of exclusion and inequality across distinctions of race, class and gender. Whereas previous research has highlighted the ways pub closure has been articulated in relation to a figure of an aggrieved ‘white working class’ our research finds that (3/4)

Using Billig's concept of 'banal nationalism', we highlight how these emotive stories seek to include the reader within an imagined national community of loss, rhetorically transcending the diverse realities of pubs and the communities they serve, (2/4)

This paper explores how pub closure portrayed in British print media from 2000 to 2023, revealing a consistent narrative that frames these losses as a threat to the British nation. (1/4)

New article on the 'banal nationalism' of pub closure media narratives with @thurnellreadsoc.bsky.social, now out in the British Journal of Sociology: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Drawing on still images and video created by and with a long-term resident of an estate undergoing redevelopment, it explores the anxieties provoked by gentrification and how these interact with longer-running injuries of class.

A multimedia article based on my PhD research in east London has just been published by the open-access journal Roadsides. It's part of a collection on 'infrastructural anxieties'.

roadsides.net/deakin-012/

I've put this story outside the paywall for the rest of today, in case you want to see the type of journalism that I'm working on with London Centric.

If you like what you read, your support would be much appreciated — and paying subscribers always get the big stories first.