History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Archive | Learning in Focus

Learning in Focus

leeds-armitage-retribution

Using Visual Sources: Edward Armitage’s Retribution (1858)

By on June 1, 2017 in Learning in Focus

Rozene Smith, a second year history student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on how historians can use Retribution (1858) to reflect on representations of the British Empire for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit.  The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Jessica Moody, Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage at Portsmouth. Studying a “Museum of Empire” unearths a reality of the British Empire as a cornucopia of peoples and cultures, and an ‘archive’ equally monumental and multifarious.[1] W. J. T. Mitchell championed the ‘pictorial turn’ and the resurgent ubiquity of images in what became an increasingly visual-oriented culture.[2] The work in question is that of Edward Armitage, student of […]

Continue Reading 0
Chadwick Table

Using Official Sources: The Chadwick Report (1843)

By on May 4, 2017 in Learning in Focus

Rozene Smith, a second year history student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on how historians can use The Chadwick Report (1843) to understand 19th century social reform for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit.  The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Jessica Moody, Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage at Portsmouth. The nineteenth century witnessed an obsessive fixation on empirical and factual data, culminating in a fetishisation of valuable official documents.[1] Consecutive parliamentary acts passed in this period secured centralised funding for official state record-keeping and began the process of establishing a governmentally-sanctioned Public Record Office.[2] Between 1832 and 1846, over one hundred Royal and Parliamentary commissions […]

Continue Reading 0
Using Official sources – The Merchant Ship Movement Card of SS Athenia

Using Official sources – The Merchant Ship Movement Card of SS Athenia

By on February 28, 2017 in Learning in Focus

Anna-Lena Schneider, second year history student at Portsmouth, wrote the following article on the use of merchant ship cards to shed light on the circumstances behind the sinking of merchant ships during World War One for the Introduction to Historical Research Module.  The module is coordinated by Dr Jessica Moody, Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage at Portsmouth. Using Official sources: the merchant ship movement card of SS Athenia When thinking of official sources, one usually refers to the very basic formats of those, such as acts, identification documents, or taxation forms. However, there are less commonly used types of official sources historians can draw upon their research, such as […]

Continue Reading 0
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Using Oral Sources; Recovering the History of the Roma Holocaust

By on January 14, 2017 in Learning in Focus

Aron Fridvalszky, second year history student at Portsmouth, wrote the following article on the Hungarian Roma holocaust for the Introduction to Historical Research Module.  The module is coordinated by Dr Jessica Moody, Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage at Portsmouth. Using Oral Sources: Recovering the history of the Hungarian Roma Holocaust In a speech in 2014, the Minister of Human Capacities of Hungary, Zoltán Balog claimed that none of the Romany people were deported from Hungary during the Holocaust [1]. Challenging this, the Hungarian Roma Press Centre published extracts from six interviews with Gipsy Holocaust survivors, citing these from a book, Porrajmos, which includes recollections of the survivors. In addition […]

Continue Reading 0