History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Archive | Learning in Focus

Learning in Focus

reynolds triumph cropped cropped

Criminal punishments in Devon, 1598-1638

By on January 31, 2024 in Learning in Focus

In the second-year UoP history module, Underworlds:  Crime, Deviance & Punishment in Britain, 1500-1900, taught by Dr Fiona McCall and Professor Brad Beaven, students study the history of crime and punishment between 1500 and 1900. Students can take this option on a range of courses at Portsmouth, including History, Criminology and English Literature.  In this blog post, based on his work for the module, second year UoP history student Edward Sainsbury discusses what can be learned from a detailed table of statistics on sentences given to criminals at the Devonshire assizes and quarter sessions courts between 1598 and 1638. Over the course of an almost 30-year period almost 10,000 punishments […]

Continue Reading 0
memes cropped

Telling tales about the Past

By on November 16, 2023 in Learning in Focus

The celebrated historian Natalie Zemon Davis died recently.  In this post, our own Dr Katy Gibbons looks at how second-year students studying the ‘Debating the Past’ module, translated her most famous work into other media: emojis, memes and poetry! What role does story telling play in history writing? How far can historians use their own imagination when discovering and relaying the stories of people in the past? This is one of the many questions that we engage our students with as they look in depth at historiography, and think about how historians ‘do’ history.  In our second year core module, ‘Debating the Past’, one of the texts that might be […]

Continue Reading 0
tangmere cropped

They Shall Not Be Forgotten: Remembering Tangmere’s aviation dead

By on November 10, 2023 in Learning in Focus, Public History

In this blog post, UoP students Lisa Pittman, Oliver Ballard, Jamie Edwards and Holly Scott-Wilds look at some of the men memorialised in the graveyard at St Andrew’s Church in Tangmere, West Sussex. All of these men were connected to aviation in the area, as Tangmere was the site of a significant airfield from the First World War. The work involved the group thinking about who was remembered, how and where, and reflecting on the practice of public history. Lisa, Oliver, Jamie and Holly produced this as part of their second-year module, ‘Working with the Past’, working with Tangmere local historian Paul Neary. The module helps build our students’ employability […]

Continue Reading 2
The_collier cropped

PhD by Publication – Top tips from an award-winning UoP history graduate student

By on October 18, 2023 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

  Anthony Annakin-Smith is a local historian with a diverse range of interests focused on maritime and industrial history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  Anthony was awarded the PhD by Publication from the University of Portsmouth in 2022 for his work on The Neston Collieries, 1759-1855: an Industrial Revolution in Rural Cheshire. The collieries date from the eighteenth century, when the main colliery was owned by local magnates the Stanley family, and were more successful than its better-known contemporaries in nearby south-west Lancashire and North Wales. It was the first large industrial site in west Cheshire and introduced the area’s earliest steam engine. Anthony’s supervisors for his […]

Continue Reading 0
Grunwick mural cropped

Working with oral histories of the 1976 Grunwick strike

By on October 4, 2023 in Learning in Focus, Public History, Research in Focus

As part of their work on the second year core module ‘Working with the Past’, three University of Portsmouth History students – Katie Kinnes, Izzy Henman and Tom Lacey – collaborated with Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (MRC). They summarised oral history interviews relating to the landmark Grunwick Strike of the 1970s. This will aid researchers using the MRC to find out more about the Strike, as well as helping Katie, Izzy and Tom gain valuable experience of work in an archives environment. This blog post arises from their work as they reflect upon what they did, the skills they gained and the Grunwick Strike itself. We […]

Continue Reading 2