History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | slider

Matthew Voyce pic cropped

Polar Exploration and the Imperial Imagination: the social influences that drove arctic explorers to risk all

Most histories of polar exploration focus on the biographies and psychologies of heroic, driven individuals.  Matthew Voyce’s UoP BA history dissertation, Polar Exploration and the Imperial Imagination 1845-1922: Race, Science and Competing Approaches, sought to go beyond this to understand the complex ways in which these events connected with the broader social influences and ideas of their time, including imperialism, and the impetus towards scientific advancement.  Matthew’s supervisor was Dr Matt Heaslip. Below Matthew writes about his approach to the topic, and his experience of the process of writing the dissertation. Captain Scott’s grave is a lonely place. A solitary cross, hastily nailed together from pine board, watches the endless, […]

Continue Reading 0
Schwarz cropped

Creating an identity through clothing: a Renaissance merchant’s fashion book

For the second year UoP History module, The Hidden Lives of Things, taught by Dr Katy Gibbons and Dr Mary Cannon, for their assessment, students have to produce an ‘object biography’ for a historical artefact.  Sadie White chose a sixteen-century German fashion book. Described as “The First Book of Fashion,” Matthäus Schwarz of Augsburg’s Klaidungsbüchlein or Trachtenbuch or “Book of Clothes” is a fascinating object.[1] This object biography explores Schwarz’s reason for producing this book, entangling ideas of self-reflection linked to the Renaissance, the importance of clothes and the idea of sentimentality. It will explore the book’s lifecycle and how someone’s relationship with an object can change its function and importance. Throughout, […]

Continue Reading 0
British_Warships_of_the_Second_World_War_A13837 cropped

Tin Cans and Relics: The Royal Navy’s over-age destroyers in the Second World War

Although Winston Churchill argued for the importance of building new destroyers, at the outset of the Second World War in 1939, many destroyers in the fleet were aged, and of limited practical value.  In a paper given on Wednesday 8 May, Dr Jayne Friend examined the careers of these destroyers in the context of propaganda, culture and imagination to suggest how these very different classes of vessel had wide-ranging but parallel importance and purpose. Dr Jayne Friend is a naval historian specialising in the relationship between the Royal Navy, culture and identity within Britain. She gained her PhD, titled “‘The Sentinels of Britain’: Royal Navy Destroyers, British Identity, Culture and […]

Continue Reading 0
Vimeiro,_Padrão_do_Vimeiro,_Painel_de_azulejos cropped

Tombfinders: Working with the Napoleonic past

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 […]

Continue Reading 0
Megan Conway 17th c crisis cropped

Getting creative with early modern history

In a previous post, Dr Katy Gibbons looked at how second-year students studying the Debating the Past module, translated Natalie Davis’s book The Return of Martin Guerre into other media: emojis, memes and poetry.  Our first-year students in the Beliefs, Communities and Conflicts: Europe 1400-1750 module are also set an assessment asking them to employ the imaginative use of media to explore a theme relating to their studies on the module.  Below we look at two great responses to this. Having initially thought about crocheting an item or artwork from the early modern period (!), Megan Conway decided to produce a comic. Visual formats often make it easier to take in […]

Continue Reading 0