Over the last year, the History team’s Dr Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History, has been working with a local history group to find out more about our region’s railway workers. Here he reveals more about this exciting partnership – including where you can see what they’ve produced. Increasingly over the last few years my research has become much more collaborative in approach. That’s largely to do with my work as co-lead of the Railway Work, Life & Death project. The project looks at accidents to British and Irish railway staff before 1939, working with teams of volunteers at the National Railway Museum, the Modern Records Centre at the University […]
Archive | Uncategorized
Victim or scheming seducer? Investigating screen depictions of Anne Boleyn
A level studies in history and media led Damiana Kun to focus her Portsmouth history dissertation on how a patriarchal screen industry has ignored modern research and continued to attach negative stereotypes to one of history’s most famous and complex women. Damiana’s supervisor was Dr Maria Cannon. Whether someone has a deep interest in history or not, many remember the six wives of the Tudor King Henry VIII by the old English nursery rhyme: “Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived.” However, in popular culture, Anne Boleyn is perhaps the best known out of the six wives, as the one who supplanted a long-time wife and queen and set a nation […]
Liberation Route Europe goes live
By Fiona McCall on September 25, 2025 in Learning in Focus, Public History, Research in Focus, Uncategorized
As part of their second-year module, Working with the Past, second-year history students have been involved with Liberation Route Europe producing the first UK trails for LRE, including one in Portsmouth, highlighting Second World War remembrance sites and stories. This went live over the summer, and was featured by the BBC and Radio Solent. The Community in War-Scarred Portsmouth Route takes in a number of sites in Portsmouth including the Royal Garrison Church.
National Archives podcast – People of the Railways
As part of the nation-wide series of events to mark two hundred years of the railways, The National Archives of the UK ‘On the Record’ railway-focused podcast invited our own Dr Mike Esbester in as an expert. Together with archivists, Mike drew on his research and 25 years of using The National Archives to discuss early railway travellers and their experiences, and railway accidents, drawing on Mike’s work for the Railway Work, Life & Death project. The podcast is available here.
Portsmouth history graduate is Record Keeper of the Year
Portsmouth history graduate Chloe Anderson-Wheatley has been awarded the title of Record Keeper of the Year award by the Archives & Records Association, to recognise the extensive contribution she has made to record keeping for the Falkland Islands Government. Over the past eighteen months Chloe has significantly raised the profile of the Island’s National Archives service, increased local and international engagement and awareness with the collections, and has built new partnerships. Having been a volunteer archivist as a teenager, Chloe gained a history degree at the University of Portsmouth, before completing an MA in Archives & Records Management from University College London, returning to the islands to become their first […]
Portsmouth history students launch interactive children’s trail at Portsmouth Cathedral
History students from the University of Portsmouth have collaborated with Portsmouth Cathedral to develop an innovative children’s visitor trail. The interactive trail, which is available to the public during cathedral visits, invites children and their families and friends to explore the cathedral through a series of engaging clues based on real memorials and historical features. Visitors following the trail will have the opportunity to discover stories of the people commemorated there, such as the unknown sailor from the Mary Rose and the Duke of Buckingham, while learning how the cathedral has evolved over time. Read More