University of Portsmouth History student Jenny Leng produced a blog for the Railway Work, Life & Death project as part of her work on the second year core module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Mike Esbester. Mike co-leads the RWLD project along with Karen Baker (Librarian, National Railway Museum) and Helen Ford (Manager, Modern […]
Archive | Public History
Public History
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, […]
Empire and its Afterlives 3: Using primary sources to avoid simplistic narratives of history
This is the third post in the Empire and its afterlives series. The introduction can be found here and the second installment here. Several students mentioned current debates around #RhodesMustFall in South Africa and the UK and the idea of decolonising the curriculum, in order to reflect on what that might mean for the teaching […]
Empire and its afterlives 2: How do you teach history with primary sources?
This is the second post in the Empire and its afterlives series. The introduction can be found here. Primary sources represent a wide range of materials which historians can draw on, and students made the most of this diversity. The podcast episodes included discussions of armed forces recruitment posters, political speeches and pamphlets, as well […]
The ‘Whitechapel Horrors’ – Victorian newspapers report Jack the Ripper as gothic fiction
The ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders in East London in the late Victorian period have become infamous. In this piece, first year UoP history student Seamus McLoughlin looks at how an article in a Victorian newspaper was of its time in choosing to ignore known facts about the case, or any compassion towards the victims, in […]
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 […]