Staff profile

Lewis' PhD, on the politics of the left in north-east England, was supervised by Professor Martin Pugh at Newcastle University. While completing the thesis, he worked with Professor Douglas Davies (Theology, Durham University) on the Encyclopedia of Cremation. There followed two funded projects (AHRC and ESRC) on political activism in post-war Britain with Dr. Gidon Cohen (SGIA). Between 2008 and 2017 Lewis lived the neo-liberal dream, delivering zero-hour teaching in the disciplines of Politics and History to undergraduates and MA students in Northumbria and Durham universities, before securing a two-year teaching fellowship in SGIA. In autumn 2019 he started on a permanent teaching-track position with SGIA.

Lewis' varied research interests are both empirical and theoretical. He has published single-authored monographs and numerous journal articles and book chapters on the politics of the Spanish republican solidarity campaigns (1936-39) and of the Durham miners' union. More recently there have been outputs from projects into teaching local mining history in primary schools and the experiences of first generation scholars at University during Covid. 

The latter project is ongoing, as are other investigations into pedagogy. There is a longer-term plan for a monograph on anarchist ideology, using the life of one-time anarchist Durham miner turned 'right wing' national trade union leader Will Lawther as a lens.

Teaching involves modules on the history of political thought, political theory (particularly democratic theory and ideology) and British politics seen in a long-term perspective through the themes of 'class' and nation'. 

Lewis would welcome enquiries from students or prospective students interested in doctoral research on any topics related broadly to his research interests and he is comfortable with both discipline-specific and more interdisciplinary approaches.

• Education and Social class
• History of Political Thought
• Ideologies and political theory
• Mining History
• Pedagogy: theory and practice
• Working class history
• Modern British political, social and industrial history
• Political Activism

Authored book

• Mates, L. (2016). The Great Labour Unrest; rank-and-file movements and political change in the Durham coalfield. Manchester University Press
• Mates, L. (2007). The Spanish Civil War and the British Left: Political Activism and the Popular Front. I.B. Tauris

Book review

• Mates, L. (2006). ‘Debunking Myths’, review essay of Matt Perry, The Jarrow Crusade: Protest and Legend (University of Sunderland Press, 2005). North East history, 38, 171-179

Chapter in book

• Mates, L. (2018). The struggle for control of the Durham Miners' Association, 1890s-1915. In E. Avril, & Y. Béliard (Eds.), Labour united and divided from the 1830s to the present. Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526126320.001.0001
• Mates, L. (2018). Bolton, Henry. In Dictionary of Labour Biography, Volume XIV. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45743-1
• Mates, L. (2012). The Syndicalist Challenge in the Durham coalfield before 1914. In D. Berry, R. Kinna, S. Pinta, & A. Prichard (Eds.), Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red (57-77). Palgrave Macmillan
• Mates, L. (2010). Charles Wilson, the Pitman's Poet. In K. Gildart, & D. Howell (Eds.), Dictionary of Labour Biography Vol.XIII. Palgrave Macmillan
• Mates, L. (2010). Radical Cultures and Local Identities: the North-east Labour Movement’s Response to the Spanish Civil War. In K. Cowman, & I. Packer (Eds.), Radical Cultures and Local Identities (213-231). Cambridge Scholars
• Mates, L. (2005). Practical anti-fascism? The Spanish Aid Campaigns in North-East England, 1936-1939. In N. Copsey, & D. Renton (Eds.), British Fascism, the Labour Movement and the State (118-140). Palgrave. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230522763_7

Edited book

• Davies, D. J., & Mates, L. H. (Eds.). (2005). Encyclopedia of Cremation. Ashgate Publishing

Journal Article

• Bruce, M., Gangoli, G., Mates, L., Millican, A. S., & Dodd-Reynolds, C. (2023). Peer-mentoring in a pandemic: an evaluation of a series of new departmental peer-mentor schemes created to support student belonging and transition during COVID-19. Student engagement in higher education journal, 5(1), 61-82
• Grimshaw, L., & Mates, L. (2022). ‘It’s part of our community, where we live’: Urban heritage and children’s sense of place. Urban Studies, 59(7), 1334-1352. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980211019597
• Grimshaw, L., & Mates, L. (2022). ‘Making Heritage Matter’? Teaching local mining history in primary schools. Education 3-13, 50(1), 25-39. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2020.1825509
• Mates, L., Millican, A., & Hanson, E. (2022). Coping with Covid; Understanding and Mitigating Disadvantages Experienced by First Generation Scholars Studying Online. British Journal of Educational Studies, 70(4), 501-522. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2021.1966382
• Mates, L., & Grimshaw, L. (2021). Using Trade Union Banners for Education: The Case of the 1938 ‘Red’ Follonsby Miners’ Banner. Labour History Review, 86(2), 215-248. https://doi.org/10.3828/lhr.2021.10
• Mates, L. (2021). The “most revolutionary” banner in British trade union history? Political identities and the birth, life, purgatory, and rebirth of the “red” Follonsby miners’ banner. International Labor and Working-Class History, 100, 109-135. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0147547921000107
• Grimshaw, L., Mates, L., & Reynolds, A. (2020). The challenges and contradictions of state-funded community organizing. Community Development Journal, 55(2), 313-330. https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsy040
• Mates, L. (2017). Ideology, Institutions and Causes: the Committed Activist Life of a Durham miner. Revue française de civilisation britannique (En ligne), 22(3), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.4000/rfcb.1552
• Mates, L. (2016). Syndicalism and the ‘transnational turn’. Capital & Class, 40(2), 347-357. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816816661148
• Mates, L. (2014). ‘Rank-and-file movements and Political change before the Great War; the Durham miners’ “Forward Movement”. Historical Research, 87(236), 316-343. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2281.12040
• Cohen, G., & Mates, L. (2013). Grassroots Conservatism in Post-War Britain: A view from the bottom up. History, 98(330), 202-225. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229x.12004
• Mates, L. (2013). The Limits and Potential of Syndicalist Influence in the Durham Coalfield before the Great War. Labor History, 54(1), 42-63. https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656x.2012.759808
• Mates, L. (2013). ‘Seven Shillings is Not Exactly the Millennium’: Economic Liberalism and the Campaign for a Miners' Minimum Wage in the Durham Coalfield to 1914. Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 34(1), 49-81. https://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2013.34.3
• Cohen, G., Mates, L., & Flinn, A. (2012). Capture-Recapture Methods and Party Activism in Britain. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 43(2), 247-274. https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_00381
• Cohen, G., Flinn, A., & Mates, L. (2008). Political Culture and the Post-War Labour Party: Values, Practices and Activism in South Lewisham Labour Party, 1948-71. Socialist History, 32, 59-83
• Mates, L. (2006). Durham and South Wales Miners and the Spanish Civil War. Twentieth Century British History, 17(3), 373-395. https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwl020
• Mates, L. (2006). 'The North-East and the Campaigns for the Popular Front, 1938-39'. Northern History, 43(2), 273-301. https://doi.org/10.1179/174587006x116176
• Flinn, A., Cohen, G., & Mates, L. (2005). National politicians and local political parties: Herbert Morrison and the South Lewisham Labour Party
• Mates, L. (2004). 'Britain's Popular Front? The Case of the Tyneside Foodship Campaign, 1938-1939'. Labour History Review, 69(1), 35-57
• Mates, L. (2004). 'A 'Most Fruitful Period'? The North East District Communist Party and the Popular Front Period, 1935-39'. North East history, 35, 54-98