Category: Events

events

  • London’s female gangsters: press responses and gendered implications 1890-1940

    London’s female gangsters: press responses and gendered implications 1890-1940

    On 17 May 2023 University of Portsmouth PhD researcher, Emily Burgess, presented her paper on the press’s treatment of female gangsters from the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. If you missed the paper, the recording is available to watch here. You will need the following password T19#MUVU to access the recording. An abstract for Emily’s paper can be found below.

    Emily is a graduate of the University, having studied for a BA (Hons) History degree between 2017 and 2020 (awarded First Class honours) and an MRes in History between 2020 and 2021 (Distinction). She was awarded the ‘Robbie Gray Memorial Prize’ for the Best Undergraduate History Dissertation in 2020, and started her doctoral studies in October 2021. Her programme of research is titled: ‘The monstrous to monarchical underworld: A study of female gangsters and their impact on the public imagination 1890-1939’.

    Abstract
    Fitting directly into constructs of the ideological ‘underworld’ as well as challenging aspects of widely accepted ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ criminality, the female gangster was presented contemporarily as an androgynous construction; directly opposing class and gender conformity which was heavily embedded in society. This period, ranging from the late-Victorian to the start of the Second World War was one of contemporary challenges and changes, including transforming press reportage and the acceleration of the ‘public imagination.’ Satiated with stories of the ‘women leaders of London underworld gangs,’ female gangsterism became a phenomenon unique to late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century urban Britain. By examining female gangsters, their notable crimes, and their refraction within the ‘public imagination’ through reportage, this paper seeks to examine the gendered implications of gangsterism, and the way in which female gangsters were fixated upon by society.

     

  • Enhancing students’ skills and experiences: A Twitter takeover, an exhibition and a podcast

    Enhancing students’ skills and experiences: A Twitter takeover, an exhibition and a podcast

    As a team we always encourage our students to enhance their skills while studying for their History degree with us, and one way we do this is by offering them opportunities to work with some of our external partners. In this post, we demonstrate how this is undertaken in one second year core module, ‘Working with the Past, co-ordinated by Dr Mike Esbester.

    As part of their studies during their History degree, our students have worked with a range of local and international institutions, including the Mary Rose Museum, Lloyd’s Register Foundation,  the D-Day Story archive, Hong Kong Baptist University, and Pompey History Society, and have undertaken a wide variety of interesting projects over the years.

    One of our second year core modules, ‘Working with the Past’, is set up to specifically foster this type of collaboration. In the module we demonstrate how the practice of academic history can be transferred and applied to a vast range of practical projects that involve thinking about, working with, or drawing-upon knowledge and understanding of the past (you’ll find blogs on some of these projects elsewhere on this site).

    Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery

     

    This year, one group of students have been working with Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery on their new #EndangeredCrafts exhibition. Having taken inspiration from the Heritage Crafts ‘Red List of Endangered Crafts’, the Museum will hold an exhibition that highlights the objects that are held in its collections that represent traditional crafts that are at risk of disappearing. This disappearance, the Museum notes on its website, “is due to the individuals holding the knowledge and skills being unable to make provision to pass them on to the next generation”.

    Our students, Chanel, Gemma and Loraya, in collaboration with Museum staff and under the supervision of our Dr Maria Cannon, have held a Twitter takeover (on 11 May 2023), put together a research panel (coming soon!) and recorded a podcast, which is published on the Museum’s website. To hear the podcast, go to the Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery website here.

     

    https://portsmouthmuseum.co.uk/what-to-see-do/special-displays/endangered-crafts/

  • Rehabilitating Exchange Alley: why it was possible to trust eighteenth-century stock-brokers

    Rehabilitating Exchange Alley: why it was possible to trust eighteenth-century stock-brokers

    On 26 April 2023 Professor Anne Murphy, Executive Dean of the Humanities and Social Science here at the University of Portsmouth, presented her paper on the nature of trust in financial markets in the eighteenth century. If you missed the paper, the recording is available to watch here. You will need the following password r?Qo7xmt to access the recording. An abstract for Anne’s paper can be found below.

    Anne’s latest monograph, Virtuous Bankers: A day in the life of the late eighteenth-century Bank of England, which presents an in-depth study of the eighteenth-century Bank of England at work, is published on 9 May 2023. For more details, please follow this link.

    Abstract
    This paper explores the nature of trust in financial markets in the absence of formal institutions. It focuses on London’s late-eighteenth-century stock market. This was an unregulated, dispersed, often disorderly market that was framed by factual and fictional discourses of the moral degeneracy of financiers and the risks, both economic and personal, faced by naïve investors. Yet the primary instruments traded in this market – government debts and the shares of the large monied companies, the Bank of England and the East India Company – were judged to be gilt-edged. They were the cornerstone of the investment portfolios of large-scale corporations and prudent lady’s maids. ‘The funds’ became the repository for the idle balances of businessmen, for dowries, nest-eggs and retirement funds and they were the preferred facilitator of inter-generational transfers, especially for perceived vulnerable recipients, such as orphans and spinsters. I will, therefore, discuss how, in the absence of institutions and constraints, trust was generated in the market that provided the mechanism for purchase of these securities and determined their overall value.
  • Follow in the footsteps of history: Liberation Route Europe’s Hiking Trails network

    Follow in the footsteps of history: Liberation Route Europe’s Hiking Trails network

    Earlier in the year our Rob James participated in an outreach event hosted by Liberation Route Europe in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. LRE Foundation is an international network that brings together people and organisations who are dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of the Second World War. At the event, Rob took part in a panel discussion outlining the benefits of the organisation and its new Hiking Trails project. The southern section of the UK Hiking Trail runs from London to the South coast, and one of Rob’s PhD researchers, (now Dr) Jayne Friend, was employed by the Foundation to provide material for the trail. Jayne identified many points of interest relating to the D-Day campaign in Britain, and when the trail is officially launched you’ll be able to follow in the footsteps of those who participated in the campaign. To read more about the outreach event, visit the LRE Foundation’s newsletter here. To find out more about the Hiking Trails project, and watch a video introducing the London to Portsmouth trail, follow this link.

     

    The panel discussion, with our Rob James seated third from the left
  • UoP’s History Society announces exciting new events for 2023!

    UoP’s History Society announces exciting new events for 2023!

    In this blog, third year History student Pauline Standley looks back on university life over the past few months, and outlines the exciting events UoP’s student-led History Society have planned for the new year.

    Now that 2022 has come safely to a close and the prospects of the new year are at the forefront of our minds – what better thing to do than reflect on our successes of TB1 and the exciting upcoming events we envision welcoming in TB2!

    Over the last couple of months, we entered the academic year of 2022-2023 bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, hopeful, and ready to take on the hurdles of navigating university life. Speaking from the perspective of a third year, it’s safe to say we’re looking a little less glamorous and more… sporting anything comfortable, glaring at the blinking cursor on our word documents, and probably one-too-many coffees down. However, the University of Portsmouth History Society has been (and will continue to be) a saving grace in ensuring our work-life balance lives on. We take pride that our society has created a safe and comfortable environment which has seen discussion, chats, laughs and even debates but, most importantly, a place which allows us to find comfort in knowing we’re all in the same boat.

    It has also provided great opportunities for the administrators to gain experience in organizing and coordinating plans for all our lovely members to enjoy. To name a few examples, our amazing Charlotte Careford is the mastermind behind our successful student Purple Wednesday’s down at Popworld, not to mention the hilariously brilliant themes that came along with them. We’ve also had the luxury of having an insightful and exclusive lecture held by Dr Lee Sartain regarding his research on the Civil Rights Movement Era in the U.S., as arranged by Mehmet Ersozlu. Most recently, we’ve all gathered at the Guildhall Village for some Christmas grub and some laughs, organized by myself (Pauline).

    So, you may be thinking; what have we got in store for 2023? Here are some examples of what we’re excited for:

    • More Purple Wednesdays!
    • Quiz Night: Historian’s Edition
    • Cinema Outing! (We might not get Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, or Guardians of the Galaxy vol.3 in time, so Cocaine Bear anyone!?)
    • Perhaps even a student-staff social!

    We have lots to look forward to this year, and we know that we will all need some much-deserved time to unwind. If you are a student at the University of Portsmouth and are interested in History, you are always welcome, no matter how fleeting your visit! It’s never too late to get involved on any level – we welcome your ideas and your participation!

    You can find us on Facebook – where you can find some of our history-related content and updates on what we’ve been up to and what is to come! You can also send us a message to get added to our WhatsApp Group.

    Thank you for reading; we hope to hear from you soon! 😊

  • “Officers of the society”: Lloyd’s Register surveyors in China and transnational maritime networks, 1869-1918

    “Officers of the society”: Lloyd’s Register surveyors in China and transnational maritime networks, 1869-1918

    On 14 December 2022 University of Portsmouth PhD researcher, Corey Watson, presented at the second joint Naval History/ History research seminar of the year. In the paper Corey, who is in the second year of his doctoral programme, discussed the crucial role that the small group of surveyors who worked for Lloyd’s Register in China played as middle-men in this global maritime system. If you missed the paper, the recording is available to watch here. You will need the following password MLFv8c.z to access the recording. An abstract for Corey’s paper is below. To read more about Corey’s PhD programme, generously funded by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation, see Dr Melanie Bassett’s blog on the Port Towns and Urban Cultures website.

    Shanghai shortly after opening the port to foreign trade. Wikimedia Commons.
    Abstract
    In 1869, a Lloyd’s Register ship and engineer Surveyor was for the first time posted to Shanghai, China. The surveyor, Joseph John Tucker, upon arriving in Shanghai marked the beginning of a rapid and global expansion of the Lloyd’s Register Society’s influence. By the end of the First World War the society had hundreds of surveyors in post across all five continents. These marine surveyors – veteran marine engineers whose expertise covered shipbuilding and maintenance, maritime safety, and maritime technology – played important roles in facilitating the ever-expanding networks of maritime knowledge, trade, and migration that increasingly connected the late 19th century world. This paper will draw on the concept of ‘new imperial history’ to investigate how these imperial maritime networks of knowledge functioned by analysing the lived experiences of these Lloyd’s Register surveyors. It also develops on a burgeoning literature which stresses the importance of these transnational networks and the ‘infrastructural globalization’ of the ‘world system’ that they underpinned. This paper will specifically engage with the themes of maritime knowledge networks, the movement of people, and the resultingly complex cultural identities that were produced. It will be shown first that by studying these maritime professionals, there can be found a number of interesting contradictions in the workings of maritime networks as the long reach of London struggled, with mixed success, to keep a degree of control over its agents far from home. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that these surveyors, who played crucial roles as middle-men in these global maritime systems, found themselves with complicated and frequently shifting cultural identities and levels of professional agency as a result of their engagement with these networks.