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Research in Focus

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‘Fodder for the masses’: Student recipes in the 1960s

By on October 19, 2017 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Dr Jodi Burkett is Principal Lecturer in History at the university, and teaches across the undergraduate course including a special subject on ‘Students and Youth in postwar Britain’. She is currently doing research on student activism around issues of ‘race’, racism and anti-racism between the late 1960s and early 1990s which includes reading a lot of student newspapers. While waiting in an epic queue in the Hub, or eating your Co-op meal deal, I’m sure many of you have asked yourselves: What did students eat in the late 1960s? For many undergraduate students, going to University is the first time that they are living on their own and having to cook […]

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The Excommunication of Portsmouth, 1450-1508

By on October 5, 2017 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Dr Fiona McCall teaches on a first year module, Early Modern World, where we discuss the practice of the medieval Catholic church before the reformation, and a second year module, Crime, Sin and Punishment in Britain, 1500-1850, which looks at the extensive jurisdiction of the church courts in the early modern period, as well as the role of religious ideas in punishment. Below she relates how the town of Portsmouth was excommunicated in 1450, and what it had to do, fifty-eight years later, to end this predicament. This year, Patrick Johnson, one of the students who studied the above module last year, will be researching a dissertation on the social meaning […]

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1914 SM p.38, platelayer edit

The dangers of railway work documented

By on August 30, 2017 in News, Public History, Research in Focus

In this blog, Dr Mike Esbester, senior lecturer in history, provides an update on the ‘Railway, Life & Death‘ project he has been working on in conjunction with the National Railway Museum. A database that details the stories of nearly 4,000 individuals who were killed or injured at work, including 16-year old James Beck, who Mike discussed briefly in an earlier blog (http://history.port.ac.uk/?p=315), is now available online.  Mike’s research focuses on the cultural history of safety, risk and accident prevention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project has just made available the database of nearly 4,000 individuals killed or injured at work on the […]

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What use is the past?

By on August 16, 2017 in Public History, Research in Focus

In this blog Dr Mike Esbester, senior lecturer in history, tackles a question that has long been discussed by historians and reveals how, if used carefully, the past can sometimes provide illumination for the present. Mike’s research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, particularly on the cultural history of safety, risk and accident prevention, and on the history of mobility. It’s not an original question, and historians have been wrestling with it for years. Is it possible to learn from the past, given circumstances and context change and no two situations are ever precisely the same? Do we risk hollowing historical study out by trying to ‘apply’ it to the present? Must […]

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Sir Hudibras

Laughter as a political weapon after the English Civil Wars.

By on August 11, 2017 in New Publications, Research in Focus

Dr Fiona McCall is a lecturer in early modern history at Portsmouth, teaching units on the British Civil Wars, and Crime, Sin and Punishment in early modern Britain, amongst others. Her current research project investigates religion in the English parish during the period of Godly rule of the 1640s and 1650s. What do you do if you are utterly defeated in a Civil War, and governed by a religious zealouts who have executed your ruler and are determined to stamp out most of the religious practises you hold dear? Fighting back has proved no use. You can retreat from public life and count what money the sequestrators have left you.  […]

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Visitors to Portsmouth City Museum's WW1 exhibition 2014

‘Making waves’: the activities of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures group.

By on July 31, 2017 in Public History, Research in Focus

This blog, by Dr Mel Bassett, research associate for the Port Towns and Urban Cultures project, discusses the many activities of the PTUC group, from working on major First World War exhibitions, to sharing their research with schoolchildren. Mel’s research interests centre on dockyard workers’ identities and the role of empire in the Edwardian period. Situated on the south coast, and on the doorstep of some of the nation’s most important naval and maritime heritage, the History Department at the University of Portsmouth are undertaking exciting new research into the influence of maritime history on land. Port Towns and Urban Cultures (PTUC) group was established in 2010 by Professor Brad Beaven, Dr Karl Bell […]

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