Below, former student Connor Jones reflects on his time at Portsmouth. Like many history students, Connor did not come to university with a strong idea of his intended career, but this did not matter so much, because our Portsmouth history degree provides many of the skills employers are looking for. We note that Connor’s role now involves speaking to audiences of up to a hundred people, demonstrating that all those history presentations provide useful transferable skills! It has been a delight to teach Connor, and to meet up with him again at open days. I spent some of the formative years of my life at the University of Portsmouth where […]
Author Archive | Fiona McCall
Summer vacation 2020: a virtual tour round Marseille
In this post, PhD student and Gale ambassador Megan Ison shows that even under lockdown conditions, our horizons need not be limited, as she takes us on a virtual vacation in France, using Gale primary sources, to get us in the mood for that holiday we plan to take, next year … Summer 2020 – a vacation period with a difference After a busy exam season each May, students up and down the country look forward to long summer vacations. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we can’t catch a flight this summer holiday. Excitingly, Gale Primary Sources, an online database of digitalised primary sources, allows you to still explore your cancelled holiday […]
From Margins to Centre? An undergraduate conference on marginalised histories
At Portsmouth we were delighted to have not one, but two students presenting their work at the recent ‘From Margins to Centre’ conference at the University of York – a testament to the innovative and exciting research our students are devising and doing. In this blog post our second contributor, third year student Amelia Boddice, discusses the conference and where her paper fitted into the themes of the day. As well as building her employability skills, the conference prompted some thought-provoking reflections on the nature of historical enquiry: Amelia clearly got lots out of the day – just as it should be! The whole history team here at Portsmouth pitched […]
Human Rights and the COVID-19 lockdown
To follow Tuesday’s post on the morality of state intervention in controlling disease, here we repost an article by our own Professor Dave Andress, which has appeared on the University of Sheffield History Matters blog. http://www.historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk/human-rights-covid-19-lockdown/
Putting a positive spin on war-time evacuation
In this blog post, second-year history student Alex Symonds looks at a diary from World War II, now in the Imperial War museum. The diary, apparently a joint effort by three girl guides, was probably intended for public consumption, and thus downplays the negative impact of war-time life for evacuees. The evacuation of British children in World War II is often depicted as a negative experience for everyone involved. Children who had never even left their home towns suddenly had to adapt to life in the countryside and living with strangers, while their host families were confronted with dirty, disease-riddled children who were nothing like they had ever seen before.[1] […]
The morality of state intervention in sexually-transmitted disease
Is it appropriate for governments to restrict personal liberty in an effort to control disease? This issue has come very much to the fore in the wake of the current worldwide Coronavirus epidemic. In this post, Darcy Mckinlay, a second year history student, writes about nineteenth-century arguments against forcible methods of controlling venereal diseases. During the nineteenth century there was an increase in state intervention, marking a transformation from a previous ‘non-interference’ government approach.[1] In 1864, the first of three Contagious Diseases Acts was passed, permitting the compulsory medical inspection and detention of prostitutes with venereal diseases.[2] This law was specifically aimed at working-women in military-based towns because the government […]