Below, UoP history alumni Nia Picton-Phillips writes about how her experiences at Portsmouth gave her the skills she needed to succeed in heritage marketing and retail at Chippenham Museum in Wiltshire. Nia studied for a BA and then an MRes in history, researching holocaust memorialisation, with Dr Mathias Seiter as her supervisor. I’ve always had a passion for history and learning about the past, so when I was applying for university and writing my UCAS personal statement, I imagined that I’d spend my career as a historian, completing a PhD, specialising in a particular field, and becoming an expert. Perhaps that is still true in a way, as I’ll never […]
Archive | Public History
Public History
Community collaboration in action
Over the last year, the History team’s Dr Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History, has been working with a local history group to find out more about our region’s railway workers. Here he reveals more about this exciting partnership – including where you can see what they’ve produced. Increasingly over the last few years my research has become much more collaborative in approach. That’s largely to do with my work as co-lead of the Railway Work, Life & Death project. The project looks at accidents to British and Irish railway staff before 1939, working with teams of volunteers at the National Railway Museum, the Modern Records Centre at the University […]
Liberation Route Europe goes live
By Fiona McCall on September 25, 2025 in Learning in Focus, Public History, Research in Focus, Uncategorized
As part of their second-year module, Working with the Past, second-year history students have been involved with Liberation Route Europe producing the first UK trails for LRE, including one in Portsmouth, highlighting Second World War remembrance sites and stories. This went live over the summer, and was featured by the BBC and Radio Solent. The Community in War-Scarred Portsmouth Route takes in a number of sites in Portsmouth including the Royal Garrison Church.
National Archives podcast – People of the Railways
As part of the nation-wide series of events to mark two hundred years of the railways, The National Archives of the UK ‘On the Record’ railway-focused podcast invited our own Dr Mike Esbester in as an expert. Together with archivists, Mike drew on his research and 25 years of using The National Archives to discuss early railway travellers and their experiences, and railway accidents, drawing on Mike’s work for the Railway Work, Life & Death project. The podcast is available here.
Portsmouth history graduate is Record Keeper of the Year
Portsmouth history graduate Chloe Anderson-Wheatley has been awarded the title of Record Keeper of the Year award by the Archives & Records Association, to recognise the extensive contribution she has made to record keeping for the Falkland Islands Government. Over the past eighteen months Chloe has significantly raised the profile of the Island’s National Archives service, increased local and international engagement and awareness with the collections, and has built new partnerships. Having been a volunteer archivist as a teenager, Chloe gained a history degree at the University of Portsmouth, before completing an MA in Archives & Records Management from University College London, returning to the islands to become their first […]
Charting The Perilous Deep
Below, our own Karl Bell, Associate Professor in Cultural and Social History, writes about his exciting new book on the supernatural legends associated with the seafarers of the Atlantic Ocean. Karl’s research specialises in supernatural and environmental history, the history of beliefs and mentalities, folklore, and Victorian popular culture, on which he has published extensively. The modules Karl teaches at Portsmouth include a third-year special subject on Magic and Modernity, a new second-year option on The Age of Crisis and Victorian Enchantments for the MA in Victorian Gothic: History, Literature and Culture. My new book, The Perilous Deep – A Supernatural History of the Atlantic (Reaktion Books) offers a different […]