History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

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A Festival of Dark Delights: Portsmouth DarkFest 2018

Dr Karl Bell, Reader in Cultural and Social History, discusses the launch of this year’s Portsmouth DarkFest. Karl researches ‘everything spooky’, and his second book was on the Victorian legend of Spring-Heeled Jack. He’s now working on a book on proto-science fiction ideas in British culture between c.1750-1900. This weekend sees the return of Portsmouth DarkFest, an annual creative and cultural festival that explores the supernatural, the spooky and urban noir. Now in its third year, the festival originally grew from my historical research into nineteenth-century ghost stories in Portsmouth. I was particularly interested in the power of folkloric stories and the way haunted locations can change our understanding of both […]

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Heritage and Memory: Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

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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