Paper short abstract:

Chris Pearson, Prinicipal Investigator of the Wellcome-funded project 'Melting Metropolis: Everyday Histories of Health and Heat in London, New York, and Paris since 1945' will introduce its aims, approach, and methodologies, before discussing changing representations of heatwaves in postwar London.

Paper long abstract:

Chris Pearson, Prinicipal Investigator of the Wellcome-funded project 'Melting Metropolis: Everyday Histories of Health and Heat in London, New York, and Paris since 1945' will introduce the project's aims, approach, case study sites, and methodologies, including its strong emphasis on community and public engagement. He will stress the importance of exploring the unequal sensory experiences of heat in cities whose infrastructure is not designed for high temperatures.

He will then present the findings of preliminary research and community engagement conducted in Somers Town, incluring the co-production of a mural, led by project Research Artist Bryony Benge-Abbott. This will lead into a discussion of postwar images of heatwaves in postwar London, drawn from newspapers and social media. He will argue that the heatwave of July 2022, when temperatures reached over 40C for the first time, marked something of a turning point as images of heatwaves as "fun" were supplemented by the portrayal of heatwaves as a disaster. Nonetheless, the initial findings from London suggest that individuals' emotional and sensory experiences of heatwaves remain to the be adequately represented.