Today History SPOT looks back to 2009 to when we held our annual Anglo-American conference on the subject of Cities.  The first two podcasts (the welcome by the IHR Director Miles Taylor and the plenary paper entitled Ideas of the Metropolis by Derek Keene) are now online, with more to follow over the course of the next week or so. 

Derek Keene is far from a stranger to the subject of Cities.  Indeed, he is the founding director of the Centre for Metropolitan History and his own research has focused on towns and their regional setting in early medieval Europe.  For more have a look at our 2008 interview with Derek Keene for the Making History project

As a taster also check out Keene’s article D. Keene, ‘Metropolitan comparisons: London as a city-state’, Historical Research 76 (2004), 459-80 which was first published in Historical Research journal and explores the ideas associated with the term ‘metropolis’. 

To listen to the welcome and Derek Keene’s podcast please click here, and please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments.