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Research in Focus

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Gunpowder, treason and plot: Difficult pasts and how we remember them

The BBC series Gunpowder, screened at this time last year, sparked some lively debate. In this blog post, our Dr Katy Gibbons reflects on some of the responses to that series, particularly the graphic depictions of violence enacted by the state. Katy’s research looks at religious exile in Early Modern Europe, its impact on the home and host societies, and what it reveals about the complex interactions between groups of coreligionists in different parts of Europe. The end of October often brings a focus on Halloween. The celebrations including pumpkins, trick or treat and fancy dress have tended to shift the focus away from a specifically British celebration of Guy […]

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Women’s Community Activism Project

Work has begun at the University of Portsmouth on ‘Women’s Community Activism in Portsmouth – The Hidden Heritage of a Naval Town”, a project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. This interdisciplinary project is led by Sue Bruley of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and Laurel Forster of the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries.  Dr Anna Cole is the Project Co-ordinator and Sue Turner the Project Administrator.  Sue is an alumni of the University of Portsmouth and worked for Portsmouth Television in the early 2000s. She is founder and CEO of Elephant in Scarlet, a CIC specialising in video production, based in Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard. Dr Anna […]

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History & practice – images of wellbeing

In this post, Mike Esbester discusses how his research into the history of communicating health and safety messages is linked to a current initiative to promote wellbeing and better awareness of mental health at work and beyond. ‘History is more or less bunk’. So Henry Ford claimed – rather unfairly, I would suggest. There’s a great deal to be gained from studying and understanding the past, something historians and others have been pointing out for a very long time. I’m not going to rehash that here, other than to note that in addition to the analytical and critical skills gained from engaging meaningfully with the past, the insight it brings […]

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La Marseillaise: has the song that unified the French republic become too divisive?

David Andress, Professor in Modern History at Portsmouth, has recently published an article in The Conversation on the recent controversies surrounding the French national anthem, La Marseillaise. Dave is a historian of the French Revolution, and of the social and cultural history of conflicts in Europe and the Atlantic world more generally in the period between the 1760s and 1840s. Dave teaches across the undergraduate degree, and currently delivers core teaching on methodologies, as well as contributing his specialist knowledge of eighteenth-century and revolutionary France to first- and third-year modules. To read the article, click here

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“It’s all been a lot of fun really”: Concerns over modern television and the future of comedy programmes

Daniel Reast is an MRes History and BA (Hons) History and Politics graduate from the University of Portsmouth. He has written for the IAFOR Online journal and Portsmouth Postgraduate Review on the subject of comedy history, as well as his own blogs and website discussing politics and society. In this blog Daniel reflects on the development of television comedy in the modern era and asks whether it can be as ground-breaking as comedies from the so-called ‘Golden Age’of the 1970s and 1980s. In May of this year, Channel 4 was proud to present Carry on Brussels: Inside the EU, a short documentary series following the European Parliament in its daily […]

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