The historian
Decades spent recovering the everyday history of Birmingham and the Black Country, from the back-to-back houses to the women who held whole neighbourhoods together.
Carl Chinn MBE
The people's historian of Birmingham
Historian, writer, and broadcaster, Carl has spent a lifetime giving ordinary lives their place in the record. Our Lives, Our Stories grows straight out of that work.
A Birmingham life
From Sparkbrook to the university
Carl was born in Moseley in 1956 and raised among the bookmakers of Sparkbrook and the factory workers of Aston. He knew that world from the inside. He worked as a bookmaker himself before he ever stood in front of a lecture hall.
He joined the University of Birmingham in 1990 and went on to become its Professor of Community History, teaching there until 2015. He is now Emeritus Professor. In 2002 he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, an MBE, for his services to local history and to charity. The honour recognised decades of work giving Birmingham's ordinary history back to the people who lived it.
None of it changed what he cared about most. The lives that rarely reach the history books. The streets, trades, and families that quietly made a city what it is.
A life's work
Historian, broadcaster, author
The broadcaster
A familiar voice across the Midlands for years, from history slots on regional television to national programmes like Who Do You Think You Are.
The author
More than thirty books on working-class life, labour, and community, each one telling the story of ordinary people on their own terms.
Why this project
History belongs to everyone
Our Lives, Our Stories is the natural next step in Carl's work. Where his books kept the past on the page, the archive keeps it in people's own voices, one conversation at a time.
Every guest, every memory, every photograph adds to a record that would otherwise slip away. That is the whole point of it.
Explore his work
Podcast, books, and more
The podcast
Long-form conversations with people whose lives deserve keeping. A new one every week.
ListenThe books
More than thirty titles on Birmingham, the Black Country, and working-class life, gathered in one place.
Browse the booksArticles and essays
Writing, films, and pieces from the wider archive, added to over time.
Read the archiveHear the conversations
A new episode every week, each one a life worth keeping.