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 […]
Coping with your second year of history studies – time management is the key
Charlotte Lewis chose the History with Politics pathway in her second year of studies at Portsmouth. She found the second year to be a ‘step-up’ from the first year, and gives three suggestions for ways to meet the challenge. This time last year I began my second-year studies in History with Politics at the University […]
Enjoy your adventures in history at Portsmouth – don’t let coronavirus put you off
Emily Winslade, one of last year’s first-year students, advises this year’s history freshers not to let Coronavirus put them off enjoying their studies and broadening their horizons. Firstly, welcome to the University of Portsmouth! University is perhaps one of the most incredible adventures you will undertake as an adult. To begin with, it can seem […]
Top tips for beginning your study of history at Portsmouth
Reiss Sims, one of last year’s first-year students, offers some great tips for those beginning their study of history at the University of Portsmouth in 2020. “The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.” – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the U.S. Now let me start off by […]
Third-year history – don’t be daunted and have confidence you will be OK
Ben Humphreys, who graduated in history with the UoP this year, expected to find his third year of history studies hard but actually found he had acquired the skills and resilience in his previous two years of study to get through the third year smoothly. There are a lot of assumptions that the third year […]
The banality and brutality of war: Wilfred Owen’s letter to his mother, Susan Owen, February 1917
In the second in our series on First World War sources, second-year UoP student Charlotte Lewis discusses what can be learned from a letter by famed WWI poet Wilfred Owen to his mother Susan. Whilst Wilfred Owen’s poetry is well known for describing the horrors of the First World War, his letters to his mother, […]
Normalising the brutality of the Somme: a soldier writes to his aunt, 13 October 1916
In the first of a series on First World War sources, in this blog second year UoP student Oliver Rooney discusses the experiences of Charles Wyndham Wynne, expressed through his letter to his aunt Sophia Sarah Wynne on the 13th October 1916, several months before his death in June 1917, as well as the historiography […]