Jessica Field in conversation with Isaac Rose

Blackwell’s Manchester welcomes historian Jessica Field to discuss her book Eviction: A Social History of Rent in conversation with Isaac Rose.

The book begins with Field’s own family and their neighbours facing eviction in 2017, before tracing a longer history of housing, profiteering landlords and tenant resistance.

Eviction explores the story of ‘Cardboard City’, a former National Coal Board estate built in the 1950s, sold off to speculators after the mines closed. Through this history, Field shows how the financialisation of housing placed low-income tenants at the mercy of global investors and highlights the women-led campaigns that fought back. The book offers an alternative history of social housing and a celebration of grassroots activism.

Jessica Field is a historian and writer whose work examines power, marginality and resistance, from post-war British housing to contemporary forced migration. She holds a PhD from the University of Manchester and has lectured at UCL, Brunel and O.P. Jindal Global University.