History@Portsmouth

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A History degree can open many doors II: A student interviews UoP History graduates

In this blog Archie Godden, recent History with American Studies graduate from Portsmouth, discusses a project he undertook as part of the second year module, ‘Working with the Past’. Archie and some of his fellow students interviewed recent UoP History graduates and asked them about their careers since graduating, Archie found out that having a degree in the Arts and Humanities has been really beneficial to them, something also highlighted in recent studies by organisations such as the British Academy, which Archie also discusses here. The module ‘Working with the Past’ is coordinated by Dr Mike Esbester. A History degree offers the potential for a vast range of jobs, so […]

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‘”Bandied about for a place of refuge”: Extreme Weather, Coastal Shipping and the Loss of Lord Nelson, Liverpool 1840.’

On 19 October 2022 our own Dr Cathryn Pearce, Senior Lecturer in Maritime History, presented at the first History research seminar of this academic year with a thought-provoking paper looking at the grounding of the coastal brig Lord Nelson at Liverpool, UK, and the civic and social responsibility for seafarers and the shipwrecked in a port dominated by shipping interest. If you missed the paper, the recording is available on the Port Towns and Urban Cultures website here (scroll down to find Cathy’s paper).  

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Bridging the gap between the academic and non-academic worlds II: Making research accessible

In this blog Dan Squire, who graduated with a History degree from Portsmouth in July (well done, Dan!), discusses a project he worked on last year with some of his fellow History students for the module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Dr Mike Esbester. As part of their project, the students looked into how academic historians take their work ‘out of the academy’ and into the public realm. Dan and his fellow students interviewed our Dr Mel Bassett, who researches the history of dockyard workers, to find out how she has tried to engage the wider public in the history she studies. As part of our work for the […]

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UoP’s History Society welcomes new faces

In the following short blog, third year UoP history student Pauline Standley encourages new students to join our student history society. The recently-formed history society NEED YOU to come and be part of a group who love history! We are a casual, student-led group currently run by third-year History students. As a society, we want to encourage discussion on anything historical, whether it be what we’ve been taught in lectures, a Henry VIII podcast which randomly came up on your Spotify recommendations, the most recent Russell Crowe historical movie, even down to hilarious history memes you’ve scoped out! Throughout the year, we are here to help whether it be a […]

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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, Professor of Film and Screen Studies at the University of Portsmouth.  Jeremy’s family history illustrates many of the historical issues encountered by our history students in their study of twentieth-century history: the pogroms in Tsarist Russia that drove many Jews to emigrate; racial prejudice during the 1930s against Jews in both Germany and Britain; the […]

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Smugglers, servants, and students: transporting Catholic materials to post-Reformation England

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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