History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | public history

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Going to the cinema? The changing uses of Portsmouth’s cinema buildings

By on August 24, 2018 in Learning in Focus, Public History

In this blog, the second in a series of posts looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, Dr Rob James, Senior Lecturer in History, discusses the changing uses of the city’s cinema buildings. Rob specialises in researching society’s leisure activities and teaches a number of units on film and the cinema, including, as part of the Problems and Perspectives unit, ‘History at the Movies’ in the first year, ‘The Way to the Stars: Film and cinema-going in Britain, c. 1900-c. 2000’ option in the second year, and a Special Subject on ‘Cinema-going in Wartime Britain, 1939-1945’ in the third year. Going to the cinema was an important leisure pastime […]

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‘A vital part of any university career’: A student’s experience of taking a placement unit

By on May 30, 2018 in Learning in Focus, Public History

Ian Atkins, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on his experience of doing a work placement at the National Museum of the Royal Navy Library for the Public History Placement Unit. The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Melanie Bassett, Research Assistant for Port Towns and Urban Cultures and Part Time Lecturer in History. The Public History Placement unit, a vital part of any university career, is an option that is available to Second Year Students in the School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies. Encompassing a wide and varied variability of placements the option aims to give an insight into the […]

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Heritage and Memory: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

By on May 21, 2018 in Learning in Focus

Aimee Campbell, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, wrote the following blog entry on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe for the Introduction to Historical Research Unit. Aimee discusses the process in which memorials gain meaning and serve as sites where past atrocities can be commemorated. The unit is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth.  Heritage presents the past through a memorialised fashion; compromising of tangible memorials, rituals and ceremony. Heritage and memory can be political in certain historical contexts and conditions. [1] In this blog I shall explore whether the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in […]

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By photographer not identified - This is photograph Q 114833 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums (collection no. 8502-08 [1]), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2872345

Don’t believe everything you read…

By on February 5, 2018 in Public History, Research in Focus

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 a team of Online Course Developers at the University, Dr James created an online map using the data collected by members or Portsdown U3A. One of the most interesting findings made by the U3A when conducting their research was that one celebrated V.C. holder – Commander Loftus William Jones – was born in Portsmouth, not […]

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Intersecting port cities: PTUC members collaborate with the Port Cities Research Centre, Kobe, Japan

By on August 21, 2017 in Events

In June, four members of the history team at Portsmouth participated in a series of field trips, presentations, and workshops with academics from Kobe University in Japan. In this blog, one of the founding members of the Port Towns and Urban Cultures research group, Dr Rob James, who is a senior lecturer in history, discusses the visit and what potential future opportunities the collaboration promises. As part of our goal to extend links with other institutions worldwide, four members of the University’s Port Towns and Urban Cultures (PTUC) project, Dr Mel Bassett, Professor Brad Beaven, Dr Karl Bell and Dr Rob James, travelled to Kobe, Japan in late-June to meet scholars […]

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What use is the past?

By on August 16, 2017 in Public History, Research in Focus

In this blog Dr Mike Esbester, senior lecturer in history, tackles a question that has long been discussed by historians and reveals how, if used carefully, the past can sometimes provide illumination for the present. Mike’s research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, particularly on the cultural history of safety, risk and accident prevention, and on the history of mobility. It’s not an original question, and historians have been wrestling with it for years. Is it possible to learn from the past, given circumstances and context change and no two situations are ever precisely the same? Do we risk hollowing historical study out by trying to ‘apply’ it to the present? Must […]

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