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Research in Focus

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Tombfinders: Working with the Napoleonic past

By on May 7, 2024 in Learning in Focus, Public History, Research in Focus

As part of the Working with the Past Module, four second year undergraduates from the University of Portsmouth’s BA History program (Izzy Turtle, Emily Harris, Damiana Kun and Rebekah Money) have been working with the Napoleonic & Revolutionary War Graves Charity (NRWGC) on a dedicated project to locate Napoleonic era veterans, locating and assessing their graves, and working to restore them. Founded in 2021, the NRWGC (UK Registered Charity No 1196849) was founded by Zach White to honour the memory of veterans of all nationalities who served between 1775 and 1815. The charity does this by locating veteran’s long forgotten graves, cleaning and restoring them where appropriate, and reburying disinterred […]

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Homosexual relationships in the time of King James I

By on March 6, 2024 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus, Uncategorized

A blog on homosexual relationships in the time of King James I was published today by our own Dr Fiona McCall in the Conversation. https://theconversation.com/mary-and-george-homosexual-relationships-in-the-time-of-king-james-i-were-forbidden-but-not-uncommon-223522 Fiona teaches the second year UoP option Underworlds: Crime, Deviance and Punishment in Britain, 1500-1900 which looks at sexual offences and attitudes in the early modern period.  Her research looks at the relationship between sex and religion during the interregnum (amongst other things).

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Christmas under the puritans

By on December 13, 2023 in Research in Focus

Dr Fiona McCall is a Senior Lecturer in early modern history, teaching a third-year module on the British Civil Wars, the first-year Beliefs, Communities and Conflicts module and a second year option, Underworlds. Her research investigates traditionalist resistance to puritan values in English parish churches during the 1640s and 1650s, and in this post, updated with further research from an earlier one, she discusses how Christmas was banned during this period. Christmas was officially banned during the late 1640s and 1650s along with the rest of the church calendar.  But the interdict was widely ignored.  Trawling through various counties’ quarter sessions depositions for the period, I have found frequent references […]

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The Dragon Gun: secrets of a local South-East Asian treasure

By on December 6, 2023 in Events, Public History, Research in Focus

On 29 November 2023 we were pleased to welcome Thomas Davies, Assistant Curator of Artillery at the Royal Armouries: Fort Nelson, to the University of Portsmouth as part of our History Research Group Seminar series. Thomas presented his paper on the Dragon Gun, the iconic cannon housed at Royal Armouries: Fort Nelson on Portsdown Hill.  The Dragon Gun was captured in Myanmar by the British Army in the 19th century and presented to the Prince of Wales. Today it can be viewed in Fort Nelson’s Art of Artillery gallery. The gun dates to the 18th century, is only one of four in the world, and has always been believed to […]

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Debates about the Jews’ place in a decolonised world

By on December 1, 2023 in Research in Focus

On Wednesday 8 November Dr Laura Almagor (University of Utrecht) presented a paper in our History Research seminar series entitled Reinvention at Bandung: Jewish Displaced Persons and the new global order, 1943-1962. During the summer and autumn of 1945 millions of uprooted persons made their way back to homes across Europe.  The remaining refugees crowded together in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy.  Six years later, 175,000 individuals, mostly Jews, still languished in the camps.  In 1955, the Bandung conference convened to discuss the lingering problem of these displaced persons. Laura’s research looks at what the conference debates reveal about how displaced persons and Jewish leaders understood the […]

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Disorderly baptisms in mid-seventeenth century England

By on November 23, 2023 in New Publications, Research in Focus

Baptism is as a rite of central importance within the Christian religion. Deriving from the Gospels, it was one of only two of the original seven Catholic sacraments retained by English Protestants.  In late-sixteenth and seventeenth century England, with high birth rates, and everyone required to attend church by law, it was a very familiar ritual, commonly performed before the congregation on a Sunday.  It also generated much controversy, over its precise theological meaning, as well as the way, time and place in which it should be conducted. During the English Civil Wars of the 1640s, many of the existing practices of the English Church was challenged and reformed, including […]

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