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 […]
Tag Archives | folklore
From folk tale to cheap consumer good to object of wonder – the life history of a toby jug
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 […]
Building Supernatural Cities
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 […]
Goblin scullery maids, ghostly miners and cannibal sailors: my experience of studying for a PhD at the University of Portsmouth
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 […]
A Christmas reading list
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 […]
Wymering Manor: Portsmouth’s oldest domestic building
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 […]