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Research in Focus

BSC First Aid 1972

If you go down to the Archives today …

By on November 21, 2017 in Events, New Publications, Public History, Research in Focus

In this post, Mike Esbester brings us up to date on the book he wrote earlier in the year, marking the 60th anniversary of the British Safety Council – now picked up by The National Archives and health and safety professionals. 2017 marks the 60th anniversary of the British Safety Council, one of the leading organisations aimed at improving health, safety and wellbeing in the workplace, in the UK and beyond. Fortunately the BSC is an organisation attuned to the value of the past, and – as discussed in an earlier post  – has been prepared to put its money where its mouth is, including creating an excellent digital archive , […]

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Men-leaving-DY-Unicorn-Gate

Nationalism, Regionalism and British identity in early 20th century England

By on November 16, 2017 in New Publications, Research in Focus

Dr Melanie Bassett is a Research Associate for the Port Towns and Urban Cultures project. She also teaches undergraduate units in History. Here she talks about her chapter which is published in the Four Nations Approaches to Modern ‘British’ History. A (Dis)United Kingdom? edited collection, which is out now. In 2015 I gave a paper at the United Kingdom? Four Nations Approaches to Modern ‘British’ History conference which prompted me to look at my research from a different perspective. My PhD thesis (completed at the University of Portsmouth) was entitled The Royal Dockyard Worker in Edwardian England: Culture, Leisure and Empire, and although I briefly considered the role of ‘Englishness’ […]

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The execution of the eight surviving conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot. Wellcome Images via Wikimedia , CC BY-SA

Forget gory Gunpowder – Jacobean England had a bloodcurdling appetite for violence

By on November 3, 2017 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Dr Katy Gibbons, Senior Lecturer in History, has published an article in The Conversation. Here she reflects on responses to the violent scenes in the recent BBC 1 series Gunpowder, in particular the depictions of executions of Catholics by the Protestant authorities. This discussion reflects her research interests in early modern Catholicism in England and Europe, which is one theme in her final year special subject unit, ‘Conflict, Conspiracy, Consensus: Religious Identities in Elizabethan England’. To read the article, click here

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1960s-recipe-book-1

‘Fodder for the masses’: Student recipes in the 1960s

By on October 19, 2017 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Dr Jodi Burkett is Principal Lecturer in History at the university, and teaches across the undergraduate course including a special subject on ‘Students and Youth in postwar Britain’. She is currently doing research on student activism around issues of ‘race’, racism and anti-racism between the late 1960s and early 1990s which includes reading a lot of student newspapers. While waiting in an epic queue in the Hub, or eating your Co-op meal deal, I’m sure many of you have asked yourselves: What did students eat in the late 1960s? For many undergraduate students, going to University is the first time that they are living on their own and having to cook […]

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fiona 2

The Excommunication of Portsmouth, 1450-1508

By on October 5, 2017 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Dr Fiona McCall teaches on a first year module, Early Modern World, where we discuss the practice of the medieval Catholic church before the reformation, and a second year module, Crime, Sin and Punishment in Britain, 1500-1850, which looks at the extensive jurisdiction of the church courts in the early modern period, as well as the role of religious ideas in punishment. Below she relates how the town of Portsmouth was excommunicated in 1450, and what it had to do, fifty-eight years later, to end this predicament. This year, Patrick Johnson, one of the students who studied the above module last year, will be researching a dissertation on the social meaning […]

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1914 SM p.38, platelayer edit

The dangers of railway work documented

By on August 30, 2017 in News, Public History, Research in Focus

In this blog, Dr Mike Esbester, senior lecturer in history, provides an update on the ‘Railway, Life & Death‘ project he has been working on in conjunction with the National Railway Museum. A database that details the stories of nearly 4,000 individuals who were killed or injured at work, including 16-year old James Beck, who Mike discussed briefly in an earlier blog (http://history.port.ac.uk/?p=315), is now available online.  Mike’s research focuses on the cultural history of safety, risk and accident prevention in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project has just made available the database of nearly 4,000 individuals killed or injured at work on the […]

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