Mature student Mandy Wrenn was a great influence on the younger students while studying history at Portsmouth, and is still in touch with many of them. We still use her blog on urban football as a model for students on the Underworlds model thinking about how to analyse sources for their document commentary assignment. Below she describes how she went on to study (and gain a distinction) for a Masters degree in conserving historic buildings at the University of York. Figuring out what to do after a history degree isn’t always straightforward. Some people have a plan, but for many, it’s a case of working out how their skills fit […]
Author Archive | Fiona McCall
Students visit 17th century Portsmouth
For the third-year UOP history specialist option Britain in Revolution, students are taken on a visit round Old Portsmouth to see some evidence of Portsmouth’s 17th century history. Portsmouth was strategically important in the Britain’s Civil Wars and also famously the place where the Duke of Buckingham was stabbed to death by John Felton. Here are some of this year’s students outside the house where this happened on the High Street, which was followed by a visit to Buckingham’s elaborate tomb in the cathedral including a memento mori skull. The cathedral itself lost its tower during the siege of 1642, thanks to the parliamentary gunners firing from Gosport.
The Devil’s Highway
Our own Professor Brad Beaven has published a new book about Ratcliffe Highway, the heart of London’s sailortown, which had a notorious reputation for knife crime and immorality in the nineteenth century. You can listen to a recording of Brad talking about the book here. No doubt some of the material from the book will work its way into Brad’s second-year history option, Underworlds: Crime, Deviance and Punishment in Britain 1500-1900.
Histories of Adulthood in Britain and the United States
In November 2024 our own Dr Maria Cannon published an edited collection Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z in the Royal Historical Society’s New Historical Perspectives series published by the University of London Press. Laura Tisdall, Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, was Maria’s co-editor. The collection looks at how ideas of adulthood have changed over the centuries and addresses two central questions: who gets to be an adult, and who decides? The chapters in the collection cover more than 600 years and two continents and are focused around four key themes: adulthood as both burden and benefit; adulthood as a relational category; collective versus individual […]
Realising and communicating a love for history, at Portsmouth and beyond
Ashleigh Hufton is remembered with great affection by the history team as a student who contributed keenly to history seminars from the outset and worked hard to develop her skills further during her studies in history at the University of Portsmouth from 2018 – 2021. Ashleigh has since been enjoying great success teaching history at secondary level. Below she writes about her studies at Portsmouth, and what she has gained from them since graduating. What I enjoyed most about my history studies at Portsmouth It is difficult to pinpoint the most enjoyable part of my degree because I genuinely loved every moment of being a student at the University […]
“How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?” – studying Nina Simone and her times
Below Pauline Standley describes the experience of studying for a master’s degree in history (MRes) at Portsmouth. She looked at the role of Nina Simone as a civil rights activist, a feminist, and someone who reflected the broader socio-political shifts of her time. Pauline’s supervisor was Dr Lee Sartain. Nina Simone. For many, her name immediately brings to mind her iconic, richly textured voice, often accompanied by signature sounds of the trumpets and piano in timeless classics like “I Put a Spell on You” or “Feeling Good”. While these songs undoubtedly capture her unshakeable legacy, Nina Simone is also a reservoir of intersectional experiences that reveal much about the socio-political […]