University of Portsmouth History student Jenny Leng produced a blog for the Railway Work, Life & Death project as part of her work on the second year core module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Mike Esbester. Mike co-leads the RWLD project along with Karen Baker (Librarian, National Railway Museum) and Helen Ford (Manager, Modern […]
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Learning in Focus
Differential fees for overseas students
In this new post, Senior Lecturer Jodi Burkett shares a podcast in which she discusses a chapter she has written for the edited collection The Break-up of Greater Britain (MUP, 2021). Jodi’s research focuses on the cultural and social impacts of the end of the British Empire, with a particular focus on national movements like […]
Name and shame: how I reclaimed a lost identity
The history blog is very pleased to host this guest blog. In it Jeremy Schultz explains the reasons behind his grandfather’s decision to change his Jewish surname at the outset of World War II, and his own recent decision to change his name back again. Jeremy is a psychotherapist, and the brother of Deborah Shaw, […]
Don’t lose your head – surviving a dissertation on King Charles I’s killers
Below, one of last year’s third-year students, Alex Symonds, gives some timely advice on how to survive writing your dissertation. Alex’s dissertation was entitled “‘Cruel Necessity’: Understanding the Influences on the Commissioners in the Trial of Charles I”. As Alex’s supervisor, I knew she had it in her to do very well, but my mouth […]
Empire and its Afterlives 3: Using primary sources to avoid simplistic narratives of history
This is the third post in the Empire and its afterlives series. The introduction can be found here and the second installment here. Several students mentioned current debates around #RhodesMustFall in South Africa and the UK and the idea of decolonising the curriculum, in order to reflect on what that might mean for the teaching […]
Exploring the transgressive use of clothing by female groups from the 1920s to the 1970s
Emily Jays graduated in Summer 2021 with a 2:1 in History and Sociology. Her dissertation was titled “Transgressing Gender Norms and National Identities Through Dress: Three 20th Century Case Studies”. This explored how clothing was used by flappers within 1920s America, butch lesbians and transgender women in post-1950 Britain and Muslim women and the veil […]