History@Portsmouth

University of Portsmouth's History Blog

Tag Archives | folklore

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Bridging the gap between the academic and non-academic worlds: Engaging the public in academic research

By on July 12, 2022 in Learning in Focus, Public History, Research in Focus

In this blog Reiss Sims, who has just gained a first-class degree in History at Portsmouth (well done, Reiss!), discusses a project he worked on last year with some of his fellow History students for the module ‘Working with the Past’, coordinated by Dr Mike Esbester. As part of their project, the students looked into how academic historians take their work ‘out of the academy’ and into the public realm. Reiss and his fellow students interviewed our Dr Karl Bell, who researches all things supernatural, to find out how he has tried to engage the wider public in the history he studies. Last year, as part of our assessment for […]

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From folk tale to cheap consumer good to object of wonder – the life history of a toby jug

By on July 9, 2020 in Learning in Focus

Our new UoP history module, The Extraordinary and the Everyday: People, Places and Possessions, taught by Dr Katy Gibbons and Dr Maria Cannon, studies material evidence – objects, buildings, landcapes – as a starting point for asking questions about the past.  It employs an innovative form of assessment – the object biography, which recognises that material artefacts, just like people, accumulate histories and have their own life-stories to tell, about the meanings and values of the societies that produced, collected or consumed them.  Harry Odgers’ object biography told the complex story of a seemingly simple drinking vessel, a ‘Toby jug’. Objects of the past are incredibly useful and can offer […]

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Building Supernatural Cities

By on April 23, 2020 in New Publications, Research in Focus

In this post, Karl Bell, reader in cultural and social history, talks about his new book Supernatural Cities: Enchantment, Anxiety and Spectrality, bringing together scholars from across the globe working on the relationship between supernatural beliefs and urban cultures.  He describes what the book is about, and what he learned from the process of international academic collaboration. In my most recent book I brought together and led an international group of scholars in an exploration of magic, monsters, ghosts and storytelling in urban cultures around the world.  Examining these ideas from the late eighteenth to the early twenty-first century, Supernatural Cities: Enchantment, Anxiety and Spectrality (Boydell and Brewer, 2019) challenges […]

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Goblin scullery maids, ghostly miners and cannibal sailors: my experience of studying for a PhD at the University of Portsmouth

By on February 24, 2020 in Learning in Focus, Research in Focus

Dr Eilís Phillips followed three years of undergraduate study at the University of Portsmouth with a three-year PhD on Victorian monsters, supervised by Dr Karl Bell, Reader in History at the University.  Her work is an inspiration to many, not least to my own students studying ideas of the monstrous in the 17th century Civil War context.  Impressively, while studying with and teaching at the University, Eilís has combined her academic studies with regular performances as a musician at many locations in Portsmouth and the surrounding areas – ed.   My PhD was a three-year, CEISR-funded interdisciplinary project which used an approach based in History – grounded in historiography – […]

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A Christmas reading list

By on December 14, 2018 in Research in Focus

In this festive-themed blog, Dr Katy Gibbons, Senior Lecturer in History, recommends a few texts that feature a link to Christmas. Katy specialises in the religious and cultural history of 16th century England and Europe, and teaches amongst other units, a Special Subject ‘Conflict, Conspiracy, Consensus? Religious Identities in the Reign of Elizabeth I’. With Christmas fast approaching, no doubt many historians are adding reading material to their Christmas lists! For some historians, though, Christmas is the focus of the research they carry out – and there is a wealth of academic history that considers the changing significance of this festival over many centuries. So, for our blog readers, here are […]

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Wymering Manor: Portsmouth’s oldest domestic building

By on November 22, 2018 in Public History, Research in Focus

In this blog, the fourth in a series of posts looking at sites of historical interest in Portsmouth, Dr Katy Gibbons, Senior Lecturer in History, discusses the significant but often overlooked history of Wymering Manor, the oldest domestic building in the city of Portsmouth. Katy’s research specialisms focus on the religious and cultural history of early modern England, and specifically on the Catholic communities living under Protestant rule. This connects to her teaching at Levels 4 and 6 of the History curriculum, particularly specialist modules on religious identity in Elizabethan England. For a place rich in heritage, Wymering Manor, on the outskirts of Portsmouth, is one of its often-overlooked gems. […]

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