In this festive-themed blog, Dr Katy Gibbons, Senior Lecturer in History, recommends a few texts that feature a link to Christmas. Katy specialises in the religious and cultural history of 16th century England and Europe, and teaches amongst other units, a Special Subject ‘Conflict, Conspiracy, Consensus? Religious Identities in the Reign of Elizabeth I’. With Christmas […]
Tag Archives | First World War
The story of Lucky Jim and Twinkletoe: Is the material culture of folklore providential or problematic for the historian?
Daniel Millard, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog on the toy mascots carried by Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown on the first Transatlantic flight for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit. Daniel discusses the ways in which we can use these items of material […]
Don’t believe everything you read…
Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, recently worked with a local community group, Portsdown U3A, on a Heritage Lottery Funded project that sought to find out the impact of the Battle of Jutland on the people of Portsmouth and the local area. With the help of research assistant and PhD student John Bolt, and […]
‘Making waves’: the activities of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures group.
This blog, by Dr Mel Bassett, research associate for the Port Towns and Urban Cultures project, discusses the many activities of the PTUC group, from working on major First World War exhibitions, to sharing their research with schoolchildren. Mel’s research interests centre on dockyard workers’ identities and the role of empire in the Edwardian period. Situated on the south […]
Lost Voices: Spiritualism on the Home Front, 1914-1919.
Dr Karl Bell, reader in cultural and social history at Portsmouth, has written the following blog based on his AHRC-funded ‘Everyday Lives of the First World War’ research project that examined the role of Spiritualism in Britain during the First World War. Karl’s research interests cover various aspects of ‘the fantastical imagination’, including magical beliefs and […]
‘Man Up!’: Revisiting the trenches and reviewing First World War masculinity.
“David McCracken’s dissertation was a well-written and outstandingly researched piece of work. It conducted a rigorous interrogation of current First World War historiography and deployed a broad range of evidence, from infantrymen’s diaries and letters to memoirs and oral testimony, to evaluate how soldiers coped with life in the trenches. David put forward a multi-layered […]