On 9 March 2022 Dr Aislinn Muller from the University of Cambridge gave a paper in our History Research seminar series, looking at the circulation of Catholic devotional objects in post-Reformation England, a time when acts of parliament had banned them in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century. She assessed the routes by which objects such as rosaries, agnus dei pendants, relics, and portable devotional images were smuggled into the country by merchants, students, and others travelling between England, Ireland, and continental Europe and the extent to which this constituted an act of subversion against the Crown. If you missed the paper, a recording is available here. You will need the […]
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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 dropped to floor once I began reading her work. The dissertation was very bold in its arguments with an original central focus on humanising the regicides, as well as those chosen commissioners who chose not to sign the death warrant, who have been far less studied. Alex developed some sophisticated arguments around the role of […]
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 in French Algeria and modern day France. She is now studying a Master of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Portsmouth, with an intersectional approach on the relationship between working-class women, higher education and their habitus. She is about to start the process of applying for PhDs, in which she hopes […]
Empire and its Afterlives 1: Applying the skills of the historian to the present
This is the first post in a series of four showcasing the work of second year students from across the University of Portsmouth Faculty of Social Sciences Click this link to see a video of George the Poet on the Benin Bronzes Empire and its Afterlives is a module available for second year students across History, Politics, International Development, International Relations and Languages. Newly created for the 2020/2021 academic year by Natalya Vince and Tony Chafer, it encouraged students to draw on research from a range of disciplines in order to better understand empires from a historical perspective, their legacies, and the way they are present and represented around us […]
Jewish persecution in Russia and its influence on Jewish immigration to London
The history team are excited to learn that recent UoP history graduate Emily Burgess has set up her own consultancy, Midas Tomes, for historical research and writing. Emily produced an outstanding dissertation on the female South London gang known as the Forty Elephants so it is great to see her prosper! Checkout this blog post from another UoP history graduate Ben Humphreys on the website. https://www.midastomes.com/themidastomesblog/blogpostone Click here to see previous posts by Ben and Emily on the UoP history blog.
The hidden heritage of a naval town: women’s community activism in Portsmouth since 1960
As a naval town, Portsmouth’s history has tended to have a masculine focus. But many Portsmouth women have actively campaigned for women’s rights and set up practical initiatives in the Portsmouth area to improve the lives of women. A Heritage Lottery Fund grant enabled the setting up of a project to interview these women and capture their stories. UoP history reader Sue Bruley was one of the project leaders. Project co-lead Laurel Forster, Reader in Cultural history in the UoP School of Film, Media & Communication explains more about the project and its outcomes. The main aim of this project was to document the activism of women in the Portsmouth […]