History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Archive | New Publications

New Publications

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Health and Safety in Contemporary Britain

By on January 15, 2019 in New Publications, News

New Publications | Dr Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History, has just published a book with Professor Paul Almond on Health and Safety in Contemporary Britain: Society, Legitimacy and Change since 1960. The book charts the development of modern British health and safety, in response to ideas around risk society, managerialism, regulatory capitalism, and demographic and economic changes in the workplace. Mike’s research focuses on the cultural history of safety, risk and accident prevention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Health and Safety in Contemporary Britain – Society, Legitimacy, and Change since 1960 | Paul Almond | Palgrave Macmillan To read more about the book, click here.

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Looking backwards – and forwards

By on November 15, 2018 in Learning in Focus, New Publications, Research in Focus

In this post, Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History, outlines student and staff work with an external partner to mark a significant anniversary. Mike’s research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, particularly on the cultural history of safety, risk and accident prevention, and on the history of mobility.  When people hit a big milestone age – 40 is a common one – it seems that for many the mind starts to think with greater focus about the past, as well as turning to the future. In some respects organisations are no different: big anniversaries are often used as a moment to pause and take stock, as well as to consider […]

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‘Read for Victory’: Public Libraries and Book Reading in a British Naval Port City during the Second World War

By on February 27, 2018 in New Publications

Dr Robert James, Senior Lecturer in History, has recently published an article in the journal Cultural and Social History on the role of public libraries in the naval town of Portsmouth, UK during the Second World War. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here. Abstract: In 1942 a library official in Portsmouth, UK appealed to the city’s inhabitants to ‘read for victory’, believing that they had a duty to use their reading time productively as part of their wartime activities. This article argues that long-standing desires among the country’s political and civic elites to encourage the nation’s readers to spend their leisure time prudently intensified […]

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History is not always written by the winners

By on January 26, 2018 in Learning in Focus, New Publications, Research in Focus

Dr Katy Gibbons is Senior Lecturer in History, and specialises in the religious and cultural history of 16th century England and Europe. She teaches amongst other units, a Special Subject ‘Conflict, Conspiracy, Consensus? Religious Identities in the Reign of Elizabeth I’, which covers some of the themes addressed in the article below. The article for this blog accompanies a publication in the international journal Etudes Episteme. 2017 has seen a range of events to mark the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation (http://www.reformation500.uk/). Celebrations have been conducted in ways that deliberately avoid confessionalised interpretations of the past, including efforts at mutual dialogue between the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37827736), […]

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‘Pleasure in reading is the true function of all books’: Cultural critics, public librarians, and working-class reading in early-twentieth century Britain

By on January 8, 2018 in New Publications, Research in Focus

In this blog Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, looks at the growth of reading as a leisure activity among the working classes in Britain during the early twentieth century and considers how broader society viewed this expansion. Rob specialises in researching people’s leisure practices, and 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. Do you ever think about how other people view the books you choose to read? Over the course of the last hundred or so years, people’s reading habits have been subject to intense scrutiny, particularly the […]

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“Don’t blame the shopkeeper!!”: Food, drink and confectionery advertising and British Government market controls during the Second World War

By on December 8, 2017 in New Publications, Research in Focus

An article on the ways in which food, drink and confectionary companies used advertising to respond to the government’s control of the market during the Second World War by Mick Hayes, doctoral student in History at the University of Portsmouth, has recently been published in the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing. See below for the abstract, and if you want to read the article, click here. Abstract The aim of this paper is to illustrate the impact of zoning and pooling on food, drink and confectionary brands during the Second World War, something that has not been covered in depth in historical literature, despite the significant amount of research […]

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