In November 2024 our own Dr Maria Cannon published an edited collection Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z in the Royal Historical Society’s New Historical Perspectives series published by the University of London Press. Laura Tisdall, Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University, was Maria’s co-editor. The collection looks at how ideas of adulthood have changed over the centuries and addresses two central questions: who gets to be an adult, and who decides? The chapters in the collection cover more than 600 years and two continents and are focused around four key themes: adulthood as both burden and benefit; adulthood as a relational category; collective versus individual […]
Tag Archives | nineteenth century
Collaboration in the Archive
The University of Portsmouth History team’s Mike Esbester has recently had a co-authored open access article published, in Exchanges: The Interdisciplinary Research Journal. It’s part of a special issue, marking the 50th anniversary of the Modern Records Centre (MRC) at the University of Warwick. The MRC is the major repository for archives of trades unions and employers organisations, with a particular strength in transport collections. Mike has been using the MRC for his research for over 20 years. Over the last five years the MRC has been an integral part of the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project, as a collaborator and institutional co-lead, alongside the University of Portsmouth and […]
Discovering a railway-worker ancestor
Our own Dr Mike Esbester was featured on BBC 1’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ on 5 September 2024, helping Rose Ayling-Ellis learn more about her ancestor’s railway accident. The episode is available to watch on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022n0p
Polar Exploration and the Imperial Imagination: the social influences that drove arctic explorers to risk all
Most histories of polar exploration focus on the biographies and psychologies of heroic, driven individuals. Matthew Voyce’s UoP BA history dissertation, Polar Exploration and the Imperial Imagination 1845-1922: Race, Science and Competing Approaches, sought to go beyond this to understand the complex ways in which these events connected with the broader social influences and ideas of their time, including imperialism, and the impetus towards scientific advancement. Matthew’s supervisor was Dr Matt Heaslip. Below Matthew writes about his approach to the topic, and his experience of the process of writing the dissertation. Captain Scott’s grave is a lonely place. A solitary cross, hastily nailed together from pine board, watches the endless, […]
Tombfinders: Working with the Napoleonic past
As part of the Working with the Past Module, four second year undergraduates from the University of Portsmouth’s BA History program (Izzy Turtle, Emily Harris, Damiana Kun and Rebekah Money) have been working with the Napoleonic & Revolutionary War Graves Charity (NRWGC) on a dedicated project to locate Napoleonic era veterans, locating and assessing their graves, and working to restore them. Founded in 2021, the NRWGC (UK Registered Charity No 1196849) was founded by Zach White to honour the memory of veterans of all nationalities who served between 1775 and 1815. The charity does this by locating veteran’s long forgotten graves, cleaning and restoring them where appropriate, and reburying disinterred […]
PhD by Publication – Top tips from an award-winning UoP history graduate student
Anthony Annakin-Smith is a local historian with a diverse range of interests focused on maritime and industrial history in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Anthony was awarded the PhD by Publication from the University of Portsmouth in 2022 for his work on The Neston Collieries, 1759-1855: an Industrial Revolution in Rural Cheshire. The collieries date from the eighteenth century, when the main colliery was owned by local magnates the Stanley family, and were more successful than its better-known contemporaries in nearby south-west Lancashire and North Wales. It was the first large industrial site in west Cheshire and introduced the area’s earliest steam engine. Anthony’s supervisors for his […]