Category: Research in Focus

Research in Focus

  • History & practice – images of wellbeing

    History & practice – images of wellbeing

    In this post, Mike Esbester discusses how his research into the history of communicating health and safety messages is linked to a current initiative to promote wellbeing and better awareness of mental health at work and beyond.

    ‘History is more or less bunk’. So Henry Ford claimed – rather unfairly, I would suggest. There’s a great deal to be gained from studying and understanding the past, something historians and others have been pointing out for a very long time. I’m not going to rehash that here, other than to note that in addition to the analytical and critical skills gained from engaging meaningfully with the past, the insight it brings is paramount. This is demonstrated by the existence of organisations like History & Policy, which connects historians and policymakers, and is why people and organisations regularly look to the past: to better understand the present.

    Courtesy of British Safety Council
    1981 British Safety Council poster, making use of a shock approach.

    Just one way this comes out of my own research is demonstrated currently in the British Safety Council’s ‘Images of Wellbeing’ poster competition. The competition – which runs until 19 October 2018 – is open to all, and asks for either a static or moving design on any interpretation around the theme of ‘wellbeing.’ There are 2 age categories: under 21s and 21 and over, with a prize of £500 and runner-up prizes of £250. In addition, the winning entries will be exhibited at a London venue.

    The idea behind the competition is a positive one: to enhance wellbeing and improve mental health. As such, it is framed in positive terms: not ‘fighting’ mental ill-health, but promoting wellbeing.

    So where does history fit in this? I was invited by the British Safety Council to act as one of the competition judges on the basis of my research into the history of health and safety communication. I’ve a long standing interest in how visual methods – posters, booklets, films and so on – have been used to try to persuade people in the UK to change their behaviour and act in ways deemed to be safer. This has been a 20th-century phenomenon and speaks volumes about the relationships between the state, citizens, employers and organisations like the British Safety Council, which has a 60-year history of using posters and other media to try to improve health and safety.

    The history of health and safety can broadly be summarised as an initial focus on accidents and visible physical harm to the body – particularly workplace accidents, increasingly so in the 19th century, but also accidents related to mobility: steamships and railways, but with some concern about horse-drawn vehicles and then, into the 20th century, the rise of the internal combustion engine. Beyond public health (things like the spread of communicable disease that have been well explored by medical historians), there was a rather limited concern for health issues arising from other sources (e.g. the workplace): it remained the poor cousin to safety matters.

    This pattern continued deep into the 20th century, with health more difficult to tackle due to its long latency period, its relatively invisibility until drastic harm was done, and of course social attitudes which meant people – very often men – tried to continue as if all was well and disguise their ‘weakness.’ From roughly the 1980s historians, activists and the state became much more aware of the health in ‘health and safety’, with increasing attention to things like musculoskeletal disorders and asbestosis and lung diseases. This is seen in the British Safety Council’s posters as well, with health matters appearing more frequently. Much more recently – in the 21st century – coverage of health topics has expanded to encompass not just physical manifestations but also psychosocial aspects like stress and mental health.

    Courtesy of British Safety Council
    1981 British Safety Council poster, using a humorous approach.

    These things have, of course, existed for a very long time, even if they weren’t given the same names, but now at least they are increasingly recognised and steps are being taken to reduce the dangers or to minimise harm if it occurs. (For more on occupational stress and mental health, the Health & Safety Executive have some useful advice here, and a set of useful links and resources here.)

    Looking at my own sector, Higher Education, we have seen that this is an extremely pertinent issue of late, across students and staff. (More info on the sector is available here, courtesy of Universities UK, the sector’s umbrella group.) The growing recognition of the pressures on all of us involved in universities – whether studying or working – is one reason I was keen to champion this competition and initiative: hopefully it will be one place I can use my expertise to raise awareness and to make a positive difference.

    I’ve been working with the British Safety Council for nearly 10 years, helping to uncover its archive and then making use of it in my research, as well as contributing to the British Safety Council’s mission that no-one should be made ill or injured at work. This relationship includes working on the British Safety Council’s 60th anniversary last year, producing a book to mark the occasion and which is soon to be re-published by Routledge (watch this space!).

    Working with the British Safety Council, including on this poster competition, fits happily with my belief – developed out of researching the lives changed or cut short by accidents in the past – that historical research can not only improve knowledge and understanding of the past, but where possible can and should have practical implications that can make our world today and in the future a better place.

    The British Safety Council has been supportive both of my work and its own past, including investing money in exploring and then digitising its archive. It’s been a very positive relationship, so when I was asked to help in judging the poster competition it was an easy decision. I’m looking forward to seeing the entries, and expect some tough decisions!

    The competition runs until 19 October. Further details, including how to enter, are available here: https://www.britsafe.org/campaigns-policy/competition-images-of-wellbeing/

    Everyone is encouraged to enter – and we’ll feature an update after the judging is complete: good luck!

  • La Marseillaise: has the song that unified the French republic become too divisive?

    La Marseillaise: has the song that unified the French republic become too divisive?

    David Andress, Professor in Modern History at Portsmouth, has recently published an article in The Conversation on the recent controversies surrounding the French national anthem, La Marseillaise. Dave is a historian of the French Revolution, and of the social and cultural history of conflicts in Europe and the Atlantic world more generally in the period between the 1760s and 1840s. Dave teaches across the undergraduate degree, and currently delivers core teaching on methodologies, as well as contributing his specialist knowledge of eighteenth-century and revolutionary France to first- and third-year modules.

    To read the article, click here

  • “It’s all been a lot of fun really”: Concerns over modern television and the future of comedy programmes

    “It’s all been a lot of fun really”: Concerns over modern television and the future of comedy programmes

    Daniel Reast is an MRes History and BA (Hons) History and Politics graduate from the University of Portsmouth. He has written for the IAFOR Online journal and Portsmouth Postgraduate Review on the subject of comedy history, as well as his own blogs and website discussing politics and society. In this blog Daniel reflects on the development of television comedy in the modern era and asks whether it can be as ground-breaking as comedies from the so-called ‘Golden Age’of the 1970s and 1980s.

    Cast of Carry on Brussels

    In May of this year, Channel 4 was proud to present Carry on Brussels: Inside the EU, a short documentary series following the European Parliament in its daily struggles, and pressures existing from the Brexit vote. While a natural reaction from some viewers to this series was to become ideologically enraged by the ‘positive’ representations exhibited on screen, the majority of viewers were watching through glasses tinted by satire and passive aggression. The series was a resounding success for Channel 4, whose reputation has been tainted by property programmes and dull lifestyle documentaries. The network’s history is well remembered as the first major programmer to ‘rebel’ against conformist three-channel domination on British television. It was the mouthpiece for alternative comedy and an anarchic attempt of Thatcherist satire. Alas, those heady days of near-Marxist parody and rebellion are long gone. The traditional television industry is losing its business and viewers to the young upstarts of streaming services, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. The boxset has replaced the soap opera, and American programming has emerged as an imperial power to dominate popular television.

    When I first researched the comedy programming of the 1970s and 1980s, it was without any difficulty to find examples of popular material. The ‘Golden Age’, as I deemed it to be, was awash with sitcoms and sketch shows which were to transform British popular culture for generations. Even today we feel the warmth from the comic talents of the so-called Golden Age. The popularity was due in part to its superb writing; though the real success of a series is found through its legacy and societal impressions. But can we see that the comedy programming of today will break the ground as hard?

    The Pythons in 1969

    It is my suspicion that a majority of comedies will go neglected and fall into the archives without much appreciation. The same has occurred with many Golden Age comedies of course, but I fear modern programmes are neglecting the stick used to beat society’s dusty rug. The view of current BBC Head of Comedy, Shane Smith, is under fire from the revered comedians of the Golden Age for pushing a more diverse range of comedies for broadcast. Allen’s motives are to represent modern Britain with more ethnically diverse casts and writers, as well as plots and settings. According to Mr Allen, “If you’re going to assemble a team now it’s not going to be six Oxbridge white blokes. It’s going to be a diverse range of people who reflect the modern world.” (Allen, 2018) The statement has sailed into the Charybdis of political correctness warriors and their opponents. John Cleese, the writer and actor in series such as Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, has attacked the pro-diversity movement for its ignorance and restrictions on comedic talent. Stars such as Eric Idle, Rowan Atkinson, and Ricky Gervais were quick to defend Cleese in turn.

    Cast of Fawlty Towers

    The issue is not in whether a cast or writing team is diverse, but if the comedy is reflective of society’s changes. The very best comedy exhibits both hilarity and emotion in varying quantities, and to ignore modern Britain’s inequalities and impossibilities is to reject a progression in the genre. The Cleese argument is not attacking diversity or equality for comedians and writers, but the content which is produced by both sides. Ideally, Mr Allen would not need to politicise the commissioning of comedy. But as with all media exposure and production, the development is meaningless if a viewing public hates the programme. Proof of the pudding, is in the eating as they say. It is likely that people want Golden Age laughs, but in a sauce of modern relevance. As the late and great Robin Williams stated, “Comedy is acting out optimism.” Perhaps that’s all comedy should be: a joke.

    Fawlty Towers title card
  • “There comes a time when you’ve just gotta’ be a man”: An analysis of shifting on-screen representations of British masculinity in the post-Thatcher period

    “There comes a time when you’ve just gotta’ be a man”: An analysis of shifting on-screen representations of British masculinity in the post-Thatcher period

    “Sam’s dissertation was an outstandingly researched piece of work. It synthesised contextual and historiographical issues regarding masculinity and film in the post-Thatcher era in a conceptually interesting way, and made great use of visual sources as a cultural lens from which to understand anxieties surrounding changing concepts of masculinity in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Sam demonstrated an excellent understanding of film culture, not just in the period studied, but across the twentieth century, and the way in which he revealed how certain masculine filmic archetypes were shaped and modified in response to the shifting contemporary climate was nothing less than compelling.” – Dr Rob James, Sam’s dissertation supervisor.

    Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006)

    For me, writing a dissertation on film was a natural choice, as it has always occupied a central role in my life. I first became interested in analysing the longer-term consequences of Thatcherism on British masculinity after reading an article by Nichola Poulton, who wrote about masculinity in football hooligan films. Whilst reading her article, I noted the links between the football hooligan archetype and the ‘Angry Young Man’ archetype of the 1960s, and so decided that there was great potential in a study of masculine archetypes in British film and how they have evolved since Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.

    I began my reading trying to identify the areas of British film and the masculine archetypes in which my study would be able to turn up original research. A problem I encountered during this stage was the disparate wealth of historiography focusing on American cinema. However, I found a key text which ended up heavily shaping and influencing my dissertation, which was Andrew Spicer’s study of representations of British masculinity throughout the twentieth century. From thereon, my dissertation was built upon analysis of Spicer’s archetypes. By examining how his archetypes have changed, I believed I could highlight just how dramatically and quickly masculine representations in British cinema had shifted under Thatcherism, doing so to represent the new social milieu, or address contemporary questions surrounding gender.

    Still from The Football Factory (2004)

    After reading Poulton’s work, the football hooligan became the obvious first archetype for my study, and I wanted to demonstrate that his hyper-masculinity was reactionary to the damage wrought upon British football by Thatcherism during the 1980s, drawing attention to key policies, and government responses to such events as the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989. For me, this was my easiest chapter, as the consequences of Thatcherism were glaringly explicit. My second archetype was that of the contemporary ‘New Man’. In Spicer’s work, he identified Hugh Grant as the embodiment of this archetype during the 1990s. Fortunately for me, since the publication of Spicer’s work, Grant had departed the British film industry and thus left room for research on a New Man. I quickly found my New Man in the form of Simon Pegg. It became evident that his antithetical representations of masculine archetypes in Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Hot Fuzz (2007) were both tasked with navigating contemporary gender issues raised by Thatcherism. Pegg was attempting to locate a new central position on the gender spectrum; a hybridised New Man, between two models of masculinity unable of social integration in the post-Thatcher period. I quickly decided upon using James Bond as my final archetype, and this was another easy choice as my dissertation would have been lacking had I not chosen to do so, considering his cinematic omnipresence since his introduction in the 1960s. With Pierce Brosnan’s Bond already being well-covered, Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006) was the obvious choice. At first, I had great difficulty in trying to pin-point just where Thatcherism was impacting upon his masculinity, and my reading of the film became too parochial and focused on his relationship with Vesper Lynd. However, I realised that my study was diverting from its original aim due to this distraction. So, I re-read the film and noticed the contradictory nature of Bond’s body in Casino Royale, which was caught between consumerism and hyper-violence, and so located his body as the site of Thatcherism’s long-term impact on the ideal representation of gender, traditionally personified through Bond.

    Stlll from Hot Fuzz (2007)

    I was presented with no real difficulties during my search for secondary sources, other than the original problem of texts being predominantly focused on American cinema. Whilst texts principally concerned with British masculinity in the post-Thatcher period were lacking somewhat, there was an abundance of texts concerned with British genres in the twenty-first century and I was able to easily use these to explore the masculine archetypes I had chosen. Primary sources were of no difficulty to find either, with most of these being archived interviews with actors and directors, from a selection of newspapers. However, I also used databases and government reports to my advantage, which were also easily accessed online.

    Overall, I can positively say that I loved working on my dissertation and found it to be a satisfying and rewarding experience, which for me incorporated everything I had learned in my three years at Portsmouth university, and felt like a natural conclusion to my degree. I had great fun combining my History degree with my love for film and it motivated me to explore areas of history that I had never been concerned with before my time at Portsmouth, such as gender. Since finishing it too, I have found my overall experience of watching films to have been enhanced, after my dissertation had me reading films with different lenses and focuses.

    Sam Tugwell is a BA (Hons) History student at the University of Portsmouth. His dissertation was winner of the Josephine Butler Memorial Prize, which is awarded for an outstanding piece of work on women’s or gender history.

  • Soviets and the Spanish Civil War

    Soviets and the Spanish Civil War

    Rory Herbert, final year History student and President of the History Society at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog on Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Rory is Gale Ambassador at the university and contributes to The Gale Review Blog. The role of the Gale Ambassador is to increase awareness of the Gale primary source collections available to students at their university. The University of Portsmouth Library hosts a large collection of Gale primary sources which History students can use when undertaking archival research for their dissertations and other research projects.

    Rafael Merry del Val (1865-1930) remarked in his manuscript on the Spanish Situation, written for Chatham House and accessed via Gale’s online archive, that Lenin viewed Spain as imperative to the eventual success of the Bolshevik revolution [1]. It should come as no surprise then that both prior to and following the outbreak of the civil war, the Soviet Union maintained a great interest in the outcome of this nation.

    To read the rest of Rory’s blog, click here.

    http://blog.gale.cengage.co.uk/index.php/2018/05/23/soviets-and-the-spanish-civil-war/

    “One of the Spaniards Fighting Their Own Battles: A Nationalist Soldier on the Santander Front in a Captured Concrete Dug-Out with ‘Marxist’ Inscriptions—’Death to Spain! ‘ and ‘Long Live Russia’.” Illustrated London News, 20 Nov. 1937, p. 893. The Illustrated London News Historical Archive, 1842-2003, http://tinyurl.galegroup.com/tinyurl/6YJha8. Accessed 18 May 2018.
  • A Heritage Lottery Fund Grant for the University of Portsmouth for an Oral History Project on Women’s Activism Since 1960

    A Heritage Lottery Fund Grant for the University of Portsmouth for an Oral History Project on Women’s Activism Since 1960

    Dr Sue Bruley, Reader in Modern History at Portsmouth, has won a large grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to research women’s activism in Portsmouth since 1960. The project will investigate the many struggles women faced living and working in the naval city. Sue’s research focuses on gender and women’s history in the 20th century, and she teaches a special subject on ‘Gender, Sexuality and War 1922-80’ and an option ‘The First World War, A Social and Gender History’.

    The University of Portsmouth has been awarded a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £73,300 to research women’s activism in Portsmouth. This project will led by Sue Bruley, Reader in Modern History, and Laurel Forster, Senior Lecturer in Media. Acting with partners Portsmouth Library Service and the University of the Third Age (U3A), the University’s project – ‘The Hidden Heritage of a Naval Town: Women’s Community Activism in Portsmouth since 1960’ – will undertake 50 oral history interviews from local women active in promoting positive change for women and the community if Portsmouth.

    The topics to be investigated will include struggles at work such as equal pay, maternity pay and sexual harassment, promoting non-sexist learning materials in schools, the women’s aid movement, the peace movement, anti-racist activism and the campaign for improved housing. The project is particularly concerned with issues connected with women in the naval community. The project will document the activism of women from a diverse range of backgrounds, ensuring issues of class, race and sexuality are addressed.

    The interviews will be conducted by community volunteers who will be trained in oral history techniques. Other volunteers will be working on the website for the project, which will include short ‘video stories’ from some of the women’s testimony. There will also be a small mobile exhibition touring schools and libraries, a booklet and two public lectures. The Portsdown branch of the U3A will provide some of the volunteers. The rest will be recruited via the project website and an official launch. We hope very much that some of our former History students will want to take part in this exciting project.

    The project does not officially go ‘live’ until September 1st,  but before then much preparatory work needs to be done; a website, archive research,  equipment to be bought, etc.. There will be two part-time, one year staff appointments: a project co-ordinator (0.6) and an assistant (0.5) who will act as a paid intern for the project. The adverts for these posts are live on the University website.

    If you would like more details of volunteer placements, staff posts, or you know someone who we could interview for the project, please get in touch with sue.bruley@port.ac.uk. I am happy to talk about the project with anyone who is interested. Please pass this message on to anyone you think might want to know about this project. The details for the two posts are listed below (with the link to the adverts).

    Go to https://port.engageats.co.uk/ and look for the following:

    ZZ004616 Project Co-ordinator (0.6 Fractional, 12 months from 1.9.18)
    ZZ004617 Project Administrator (0.5 Fractional, 12 months from 1.9.18)