History@Portsmouth

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Public History

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Heritage and Memory: HMS Belfast

By on July 29, 2019 in Learning in Focus, Public History

Ben Humphreys, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on the museum ship HMS Belfast for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Ben considers why the ship was chosen for preservation and reveals that political factors likely played a key role in the decision-making process. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. Heritage and memory have always had a political relationship. War museums and memorials almost exclusively portray a heroic tale of the machines and men (and increasingly women) who ‘served the nation,’ for which we should be grateful. As Gerder Lerner fears, […]

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D-Day sketch

Fear of the Unknown: An investigation into individual experiences of the D-Day campaign

By on June 25, 2019 in Learning in Focus, Public History

Cameron Meeten, third year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on the research he and his fellow students undertook as part of a final year group research project. Along with fellow final year students Ian Atkins, Dom Coombs, Patrick Kelliher and Chris Kyprianou, Cameron looked at the ‘fear of the unknown’ felt by D-Day combatants in June 1944. As well as presenting their findings as part of the unit’s assessment, the students also gave a public presentation at the D-Day Story, Southsea. The final year group research unit is co-ordinated by Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Social History at Portsmouth. For […]

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Playing Ally Pally!

By on April 12, 2019 in Events, News, Public History

In this blog, Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History at Portsmouth, updates us on recent progress on the Railway Work, Life & Death project, including a new project partner, international collaboration, engagement with audiences beyond the academic – and on taking the project to out to a huge new venue. Alexandra Palace is an iconic venue – and not somewhere I’d envisaged taking a history research project: yet at the end of the month, that’s exactly where I’ll be with the Railway Work, Life & Death project! We’ll be exhibiting at the Family Tree Live show, a huge family history fair taking place on 26 and 27 April this year. […]

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Making collaborative research … more collaborative!

By on January 23, 2019 in Events, News, Public History

In this blog, Dr Mike Esbester, senior lecturer in history at Portsmouth, discusses your chance to get involved in the research project he co-leads, looking at safety and accidents on British and Irish railways at the start of the 20th century. Mike’s research and teaching focus on the everyday, including ideas about mobility and accidents in modern Britain.   One of the great aspects of the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project, which I co-lead with colleagues at the National Railway Museum in York (NRM) and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (MRC), has been its collaborative nature. As well as working across institutions and professional boundaries […]

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View of Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, etching by Wenceslas Hollar, 1643, British Museum Print Q, C.100

Local History on Stage

By on December 21, 2018 in Events, Public History, Research in Focus

As part of his practice research PhD at Portsmouth, Vin Adams has written a play about the events here in 1642, just before Charles I raised his standard in Nottingham. The play will be performed in The Square Tower in Old Portsmouth, itself part of the action of the play, and brings to life many figures of the time including Queen Henrietta Maria, John Pym, Sir William Waller and, of course, George Goring. For anyone interested in local history, this should be an interesting exploration of Portsmouth’s part in one of the battles that prefaced the Civil War. Vin has been working on the project with Fiona McCall, senior lecturer […]

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Park Building, Portsmouth

Park Building: A seat of learning and former home to the city’s central library

By on November 30, 2018 in Public History, Research in Focus

In this blog, part of a series of posts looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, reveals that Park Building, location for History’s Open Days, was once home to the city’s central library. Rob’s research focuses on society’s leisure practices, and he teaches a number of units that focus on one of the most popular leisure pursuits of the first half of the twentieth century, going to the cinema. Portsmouth’s first public library didn’t open until 1883, much later than most other sizeable cities in England. Indeed, the country’s first public library was opened over thirty years earlier, in Manchester in September […]

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