History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Archive | Learning in Focus

Learning in Focus

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Telling tales about the Past

The celebrated historian Natalie Zemon Davis died recently.  In this post, our own Dr Katy Gibbons looks at how second-year students studying the ‘Debating the Past’ module, translated her most famous work into other media: emojis, memes and poetry! What role does story telling play in history writing? How far can historians use their own imagination when discovering and relaying the stories of people in the past? This is one of the many questions that we engage our students with as they look in depth at historiography, and think about how historians ‘do’ history.  In our second year core module, ‘Debating the Past’, one of the texts that might be […]

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They Shall Not Be Forgotten: Remembering Tangmere’s aviation dead

In this blog post, UoP students Lisa Pittman, Oliver Ballard, Jamie Edwards and Holly Scott-Wilds look at some of the men memorialised in the graveyard at St Andrew’s Church in Tangmere, West Sussex. All of these men were connected to aviation in the area, as Tangmere was the site of a significant airfield from the First World War. The work involved the group thinking about who was remembered, how and where, and reflecting on the practice of public history. Lisa, Oliver, Jamie and Holly produced this as part of their second-year module, ‘Working with the Past’, working with Tangmere local historian Paul Neary. The module helps build our students’ employability […]

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PhD by Publication – Top tips from an award-winning UoP history graduate student

  Anthony Annakin-Smith is a local historian with a diverse range of interests focused on maritime and industrial history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  Anthony was awarded the PhD by Publication from the University of Portsmouth in 2022 for his work on The Neston Collieries, 1759-1855: an Industrial Revolution in Rural Cheshire. The collieries date from the eighteenth century, when the main colliery was owned by local magnates the Stanley family, and were more successful than its better-known contemporaries in nearby south-west Lancashire and North Wales. It was the first large industrial site in west Cheshire and introduced the area’s earliest steam engine. Anthony’s supervisors for his […]

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Working with oral histories of the 1976 Grunwick strike

As part of their work on the second year core module ‘Working with the Past’, three University of Portsmouth History students – Katie Kinnes, Izzy Henman and Tom Lacey – collaborated with Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (MRC). They summarised oral history interviews relating to the landmark Grunwick Strike of the 1970s. This will aid researchers using the MRC to find out more about the Strike, as well as helping Katie, Izzy and Tom gain valuable experience of work in an archives environment. This blog post arises from their work as they reflect upon what they did, the skills they gained and the Grunwick Strike itself. We […]

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One of the questions we’re most frequently asked by students who will be joining us as first years in the autumn term is “What reading do we need to do to prepare for the course?” When you join us and register in September, you will gain access to all of our library resources, including e-books and journals – there is no need for you to spend money in advance!  But, it can be really helpful to keep thinking about History-related things over the summer. Members of the History team have put together this list of suggestions of things to read or listen to. For students joining us for the first […]

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