History@Portsmouth
University of Portsmouth's History Blog
In a previous post, Dr Katy Gibbons looked at how second-year students studying the Debating the Past module, translated Natalie Davis’s book The Return of Martin Guerre into other media: emojis, memes and poetry. Our first-year students in the Beliefs, Communities and Conflicts: Europe 1400-1750 module are also set an assessment asking them to employ the […]
Dr Fiona McCall is a Senior Lecturer in early modern history, teaching a third-year module on the British Civil Wars, the first-year Beliefs, Communities and Conflicts module and a second year option, Underworlds. Her research investigates traditionalist resistance to puritan values in English parish churches during the 1640s and 1650s, and in this post, updated […]
Below, one of last year’s third-year students, Alex Symonds, gives some timely advice on how to survive writing your dissertation. Alex’s dissertation was entitled “‘Cruel Necessity’: Understanding the Influences on the Commissioners in the Trial of Charles I”. As Alex’s supervisor, I knew she had it in her to do very well, but my mouth […]
In this post, UoP senior lecturer in history Dr Fiona McCall talks about her new book Church and People in Interregnum Britain, bringing together new research from scholars across Britain and further afield on the profound religious changes which took place after the British Civil Wars and how people responded to them. From 1642-5, England, […]
Many people instinctively blame King Charles I for the British Civil Wars. So recent UoP history graduate Connor Scott-Butcher’s decision to use his dissertation to challenge the idea, perpetuated by the regicides, that Charles was a “man of blood”, and the weight of historical argument ranged against him, always seemed to me a risky and […]
On 10th March 2021 the paper in our UoP History Research seminar series was by UoP history lecturer Dr Fiona McCall, who gave a paper on female deviance during the English interregnum, including fighting in church, sexual harassment, drinking, swearing and cursing, adultery and witchcraft. This paper has been recorded for those unable […]