History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

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Birmingham Museum Trust tapestry

The Lost Crafts of the Past

As part of their work on the second year core module ‘Working with the Past’, three University of Portsmouth History students – Chanel Parker, Loraya Head, and Gemma Norris – collaborated with Portsmouth Museum and Art Gallery to curate a three-month exhibition that both celebrated the crafts of our ancestors and highlighted the importance of preserving the craftspeoples’ skills for future generations. In this blog, written for Hampshire Archives Trust, Chanel Parker discusses the research methods the group used when curating the exhibition. ‘Working with the Past’ is coordinated by Mike Esbester. To read the blog, click this link.   Slider image courtesy of Birmingham Museums Trust

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‘Ports Cities in Comparative Global History’: Team members collaborate with researchers in Hong Kong

Earlier this month, a number of team members visited Hong Kong to participate in a series of institutional visits and present at an international conference on ‘Port Cities in Comparative Global History’ at Hong Kong Baptist University. To find out more about the conference, read this excellent blog by one of our PhD researchers, Charlotte Steffen, who presented their paper ‘Beyond China Town- The Multi-national Migration of Chinese Students in Europe’ on the second day of the event. The link to Charlotte’s blog is here.    

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‘More diverse and culturally inclusive’: Post-war immigration and its impact on British culture

In this blog, recent BA (Hons) History with Politics graduate Phil Matthews reflects on the impact immigration has had on British culture in the post-Second World War era. Phil, who wrote the blog as part of his assessment for the second year module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Dr Mike Esbester, describes how many aspects of British culture changed as a result of mass immigration into the country in the latter half of the twentieth century. Britain, Phil notes, transformed into a multi-ethnic society and benefitted massively from immigrants bringing their own country’s cultures with them. The twentieth century normalised the multi-cultural society that we live in today, Phil […]

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The Battle of Culloden

The domestic colonisation of eighteenth-century Scotland

Third year student Kathryn Watts chose an original focus for her dissertation in investigating the eighteenth century attack on Scottish culture. As she argues below, colonialism is often looked at in the global context, but the domestic colonialism of Scotland (and Ireland) predated it, and provided a prototype for many of the colonialist ideas of racial hierarchy and methods of cultural indoctrination which followed.  It has been fascinating supervising Kathryn’s dissertation journey – ed. On April 16, 1746, the bloody battle of Culloden ended with Jacobite defeat; the rebellion of Bonnie Prince Charlie, crushed. This date became synonymous with the decimation of Highland culture, as pro-Government forces sought to destroy […]

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Marseille 1A

Summer vacation 2020: a virtual tour round Marseille

In this post, PhD student and Gale ambassador Megan Ison shows that even under lockdown conditions, our horizons need not be limited, as she takes us on a virtual vacation in France, using Gale primary sources, to get us in the mood for that holiday we plan to take, next year … Summer 2020 – a vacation period with a difference After a busy exam season each May, students up and down the country look forward to long summer vacations. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, we can’t catch a flight this summer holiday.  Excitingly, Gale Primary Sources, an online database of digitalised primary sources, allows you to still explore your cancelled holiday […]

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Using Visual Sources: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Mark Cleverly, a second year History student at the University of Portsmouth, has written the following blog entry on the 1960 ‘New Wave’ film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) for the Introduction to Historical Research module. Mark discusses how the film reveals much about changing social attitudes in the ‘swinging sixties’. The module is co-ordinated by Dr Maria Cannon, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Portsmouth. The proverb ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is certainly a cliché in the modern era, but it superficially highlights the value that can be found in visual sources. If a still image can muster this level of inquiry, then what of […]

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