Mediating the Decline of Industrial Cities Knowledge Production, Heritage-Making and Urban Transformation in Postwar Europe

Introduction: Mediating the Transformation and Decline of Industrial Cities
Christoph Brüll, Sebastian Haumann, Stefan Krebs and Jens van de Maele

Part 1: Mediating the Understanding of Industrial Decline

1. “It’ll all be over with this place in two years”: Deindustrialisation and the Future of Work and Place on Late-1960s Tyneside
Matt Beebee

2. Mediating Knowledge in a European (Semi-)Periphery: Youth, Labour, and Urban Research in Romania in the 1960s and 1970s
Mara Mărginean

3. Being Unemployed: Deindustrialisation as an Issue in the Periodicals Published by Initiatives for the Unemployed in the Ruhr during the 1980s
Sebastian Haumann

4. Photography Mediating Change: The Role of Images During the Decline of Luxembourg’s Industrial South
Viktoria Boretska

5. Interpreting, Mediating, and Coping with Deindustrialisation: Churches as Urban Actors in Manchester from the Late 1960s to the 1980s
Sarah Thieme

Part 2: Mediating Urban Transformations

6. “We Swallow the Dirt”: Popular and Governmental Perceptions of Metallurgical Air Pollution in Luxembourg During the Trente Glorieuses
Jens van de Maele

7. How the Working Class in the Longwy Region Dealt with the Restructuring of the Steel Industry
Théo Georget

8. Memory, Heritage, and the Post-Steel City: Mediating the Transformation of Sheffield Since 1990
Chris Corker and James Fenwick

9. The Classic Slum?: Heritage Discourses, Ideologies of Transition and the Remaking of Post-Industrial Salford (1985–2021)
Carole O’Reilly

Part 3: Mediating Industrial-Heritage

10. Working-Class Memories and Legacies of Deindustrialisation through Cultural Creation in Asturias, Spain
Irene Díaz Martínez

11. The Origins of Memory Construction through Film in the Context of Deindustrialisation in French Lorraine
Nadège Mariotti

12. Digital unter Tage – (Data) Mining Life Stories and Social Culture in the Ruhr Area
Dennis Möbus

Biography

Christoph Brüll is Assistant Professor for Contemporary History at Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH). His research interests include the history of cross-border cooperation in Western Europe. He is the co-editor of Föderalisierung, Strukturwandel, Erwartungshorizonte [Federalisation, Structural Change, Expectations] (2023).

Sebastian Haumann is Professor for Economic, Social, and Environmental History at Paris Lodron University Salzburg. His research interests include the history of raw materials and new methods in the field of Citizen Science. He is the co-editor of Concepts of Urban-Environmental History (2020).

Stefan Krebs is Assistant Professor for Contemporary History at Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH). His research interests include the industrial history of Luxembourg and the history of repair and maintenance. He is the co-editor of The Persistence of Technology (2021) and Deindustrialisierung: Zum sozio-ökonomischen Wandel westeuropäischer Industriegesellschaften seit den 1970er Jahren [Deindustrialization: The Socio-economic Transformation of Western European Industrial Societies Since the 1970s] (forthcoming).

Jens van de Maele is a postdoctoral member of the research group Modernity and Society (1800-2000) at KU Leuven. His research interests include architectural history and urban environmental history. He is the author of Architectures of Bureaucracy: The Politics of Government Office Buildings in Interwar Belgium (2025) and editor of Behind Office Doors: Use and Users in the History of Office Buildings (2026).

Praise for the Third Edition

'... Burke’s is still an erudite and stimulating guide to pre-industrial European culture after thirty years of lively work in the field.’

Times Literary Supplement

’... probably even more important now than it was in 1978.’

Times Higher Education

'The study of popular culture has come a long way since the first publication of Burke’s work. However, it is still the only work offering a European-wide view. This updated, third edition remains a valuable reference point for those interested in early modern European societies.'

Historein

'Burke’s highly readable book remains an excellent introduction to early modern European history.'

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