A series of seminars in collaboration with Liverpool John Moores University exploring links between art and research around notions of hospitality.

Professor Joe Moran is a cultural historian focusing on Britain in the very recent past, with a particular interest in the everyday. Following on from his acclaimed book On Roads: A Hidden History (2009) he will speak about the aesthetics of the road sign, driver etiquette as a minimal sort of community, the ecology of the roadside, service stations and motels as ‘non-places’.

Along with his academic research, he writes regularly for the Guardian, the Financial Times and other newspapers and magazines, mainly about the history and politics of mundane aspects of daily life. His most recent books also includes Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime (2007), a cultural history of daily habits since the war, inspired in part by the Mass-Observation surveys of the 1930s and 1940s.

He maintains a blog (‘on the everyday, the banal and other important matters’) at joemoransblog.blogspot.com and tweets on twitter.com/joemoransblog