{"word_count": 271, "character_count": 1811}
Founded in 1976, the Social History Society (SHS) organises an annual conference which is the largest regular gathering of social and cultural historians in the UK. In 2014, this event took place at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, with over 190 papers being presented across seven thematic strands. In 2015, the SHS conference is heading to the south of England: it'll take place from 31 March to 2 April at Portsmouth University. The deadline for paper and panel proposals is 8 December 2014. Further information can be accessed via the conference website.Readers of the 'Humanitarianism and Human Rights' blog may be particularly interested in the 'Global and Transnational Approaches' strand, which ran for the first time at the Northumbria conference. In 2014, one panel was specifically dedicated to 'Humanitarian Networks', with Tom Davies (City University) discussing Lifesaving Societies in the early 19th century, Vanessa Lincoln (Sciences-Po) analysing the Société de la morale chrétienne, and Tehila Sasson (UC Berkeley) considering the interplay between imperial and humanitarian practices. Another panel examined different responses to natural disasters in twentieth-century East Asia, with contributions from David William Clayton (York), Chris Courtney (Cambridge), Pierre Fuller (Manchester) and Janet Hunter (LSE). Furthermore, several individual papers also covered issues that connect to the themes of the HHR blog - for example, Matt Perry (Newcastle) discussed Ellen Wilkinson's contribution to the 'Hands Off China' campaign in the second half of the 1920s.You can find a full description of the stand and its rationale via this link. If you have any further questions, you are also welcome to contact the strand convenors: Pierre Fuller, Emma Hunter and Daniel Laqua.&#160;