Nel 1873 la Gotthardbahn avviò sul territorio ticinese la costruzione delle cosiddette linee di pianura: la Lugano-Chiasso, la Bellinzona-Biasca e la Bellinzona-Locarno. Si trattò di una corsa contro il tempo per rispettare la scadenza del 6 dicembre 1874 che mobilitò migliaia di lavoratori soprattutto italiani. Esse costituirono la prima ossatura di un tracciato che dovette essere completato entro il 1882 con il collegamento attraverso il Ceneri, la tratta in direzione di Luino, le rampe d’accesso al Gottardo e il grande traforo alpino per connettere il Ticino al Nord delle Alpi.

Developments since 1990 are increasingly becoming the focus of historical research. For the issue 66 (2026) of the Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, we invite authors from the fields of history and the historical social and cultural sciences to reflect with us on the processes of social change that have taken place from the 1990s to the immediate present. We are interested in the manifold upheavals after the great »epochal change« of 1989/90, a history of transformation and co-transformation that is currently the subject of intense debate.

Madeline Linford (1895-1975) was the first woman on the Editorial Board of the Manchester Guardian, working for the newspaper from 1913 to 1953. She wrote theatre, film and book reviews as well as numerous articles on topics ranging from the Manchester sales to the clothing of the Victorian baby. In 1919 and 1921 she visited France, Austria and Poland, reporting on the efforts of the Friends’ Relief Mission to combat suffering and disease. In the autumn of 1939 she wrote articles on how the war was affecting women in Manchester.

Liverpool University Press is pleased to inform you of the latest content in Labour History: a Journal of Labour and Social History, published on behalf of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, the journal is a highly regarded publication that is essential reading for those working in and researching social and labour history in Australasia.

While much of this historiography has focused on liberal democracies, less attention has been given to how concepts of risk operated in state socialist contexts. Building on recent studies in the history of medicine and health, we invite scholars to join a working group examining risk, health, and medicine under state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe. To what extent did state socialist regimes recognize certain health and medical issues as ‘governable’ through risk? What kinds of practices and ideas emerged in response?