The morality of state intervention in sexually-transmitted disease
Is it appropriate for governments to restrict personal liberty in an effort to control disease? This issue has come very much to the fore in the wake of the current worldwide Coronavirus epidemic. In this post, Darcy Mckinlay, a second year history student, writes about nineteenth-century arguments against forcible methods of controlling venereal diseases. During […]
How I learned to stop worrying and chose my dissertation topic
Third year student Sophie McKee gives some frank and timely advice about the process of choosing a dissertation topic. I’m not bitter that she rejected my topic, really – ed. When Rob James asked me to write a blog post about writing about dissertations we both enjoyed a wee chuckle. For I, after going back […]
The 1911 census: the government and the suffragettes have a conversation
A 1911 census form provides evidence of the ways in which the suffragettes challenged state authority. This piece was written by second-year UoP history student Ashleigh Hufton for the second-year module, Danger! Censorship, Power and the People. Forms articulate conversations between two parties, argues Dobraszczyk, in an article on the Victorian census. [1] A 1911 […]
From fresher to history graduate to financial consultant
Below, former student Connor Jones reflects on his time at Portsmouth. Like many history students, Connor did not come to university with a strong idea of his intended career, but this did not matter so much, because our Portsmouth history degree provides many of the skills employers are looking for. We note that Connor’s role […]
Summer vacation 2020: a virtual tour round Marseille
In this post, PhD student and Gale ambassador Megan Ison shows that even under lockdown conditions, our horizons need not be limited, as she takes us on a virtual vacation in France, using Gale primary sources, to get us in the mood for that holiday we plan to take, next year … Summer 2020 – […]
From Margins to Centre? An undergraduate conference on marginalised histories
At Portsmouth we were delighted to have not one, but two students presenting their work at the recent ‘From Margins to Centre’ conference at the University of York – a testament to the innovative and exciting research our students are devising and doing. In this blog post our second contributor, third year student Amelia Boddice, […]
Human Rights and the COVID-19 lockdown
To follow Tuesday’s post on the morality of state intervention in controlling disease, here we repost an article by our own Professor Dave Andress, which has appeared on the University of Sheffield History Matters blog. Human Rights and the COVID-19 Lockdown
Putting a positive spin on war-time evacuation
In this blog post, second-year history student Alex Symonds looks at a diary from World War II, now in the Imperial War museum. The diary, apparently a joint effort by three girl guides, was probably intended for public consumption, and thus downplays the negative impact of war-time life for evacuees. The evacuation of British children […]