It was hosted by the Trade Union & Employment Forum of History & Policy, and brought together practitioners, trades unionists and academics – including the University of Portsmouth History team’s Dr Mike Esbester. Mike’s research focuses on histories of safety, risk and accident prevention in modern Britain. Some of that has looked at the changing landscape of health and safety at work and beyond since 1960 – including the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. The change of law was much needed; in the 1960s and early 1970s, UK workplaces were still killing and injuring large number of people. Their impacts were felt beyond the factory walls, too, as workplace incidents affected more than ‘just’ employees.
The principles underlying the Act had both radical and conservative elements. They extended the duty of care far beyond the boundaries of the workplace. At the same time, they modelled older ideas about who was able to prevent harm. Mike brought these tensions and contradictions out in his presentation to the symposium, which gave a long-term historical overview of the Act’s originals. He’s explored some of these aspects in this piece for The Conversation. This piece, written for History & Policy at the 40th anniversary of the Act, is also still relevant today. All of this work draws upon Mike’s research, including the ‘Changing Legitimacy of Health and Safety at Work’ project, funded by the Institution of Occupational Safety & Health.
The symposium brought together different approaches, from the historical to the present day, the philosophical to the practical. It wrestled with the question of how far the 1974 Act has kept pace with the world around it, and whether or not it might be time for a new means of approaching health and safety in the UK.
Below Dr Jodi Burkett, UoP senior lecturer in late twentieth-century history, imperial history and race, writes about a conference she attendance sharing ideas for decolonising the university curriculum.
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Reimagining Higher Education: Journeys of decolonising conference held at the Institute of Education in London (thanks to SASSHPL for funds to support this!). I was attending with my colleague Bhavin Dedhia (Dentistry) to present some work that we have been doing with Lena Grinsted (Biology) to decolonise science teaching and promote inclusive teaching and learning spaces here at Portsmouth. This work is based on research that Lena undertook a few years ago which will be published shortly in Plos One.
While it was really helpful and interesting to present what we’ve been working on, listening to the keynotes and other speakers was perhaps even more useful. In reflecting on the day I think that there were three things in particular that stood out to me about the conference and the presentations that I saw.
First, there was a clear recognition that we need to pay more attention to the emotions involved in decolonising work. One of the first plenary sessions was from the team at De Montfort who have done extensive work on decolonising the university. They encouraged conference participants to reflect on the joy that came with doing decolonising work. This is very true – undertaking work to decolonise curricula has allowed me to work with colleagues that I might never have met which has been amazing. The work itself has also encouraged me to think about my research and my teaching in new and different ways and has been fulfilling work. That said, the reason we needed to be reminded to reflect on the joy is because the challenge and the emotional difficulty of doing this work are so apparent and ever-present, which I will expand upon a bit next.
The second thing that kept recurring throughout the day was the particular challenges that most people across the sector are experiencing. Decolonising work is challenging to do, not just because it requires a high level of self-reflection and commitment to change the way you think and do things. It is also challenging because there are many people who don’t think it is possible or worth doing (or who are adamantly opposed to it). One of the keynote speakers spoke about trying to do this work while politicians in his state actively sought to prevent him. Doing this work therefore becomes logistically and strategically difficult and takes an emotional toll that is often overlooked.
Finally, the importance of history for decolonising was mentioned repeatedly by a whole range of speakers. One of the most significant first steps in decolonising is to know about the context in which our societies, our assumptions, and our ways of knowing were created. And understanding context is what we, historians, do best! One of the main pillars of the work that I’ve been doing with Lena and Bhavin has been to highlight how important transdisciplinarity is to the project of decolonising. This is a collective endeavour that is best achieved in partnership. We all need to know and understand the context of the world we live in, but that doesn’t mean that everyone needs to be an historian. What it does mean, is that historians are crucial. Teaching students the skills of historians – to evaluate data, to understand various interpretations, and to know the historical context – is, itself, part of the decolonising project. This conference reinforced for me the importance of historians and historical knowledge and the importance of historians in sharing this knowledge and working with those outside of our disciplines and in the wider world.
Below Pauline Standley describes the experience of studying for a master’s degree in history (MRes) at Portsmouth. She looked at the role of Nina Simone as a civil rights activist, a feminist, and someone who reflected the broader socio-political shifts of her time. Pauline’s supervisor was Dr Lee Sartain.
Nina Simone. For many, her name immediately brings to mind her iconic, richly textured voice, often accompanied by signature sounds of the trumpets and piano in timeless classics like “I Put a Spell on You” or “Feeling Good”. While these songs undoubtedly capture her unshakeable legacy, Nina Simone is also a reservoir of intersectional experiences that reveal much about the socio-political dynamics of 20th-century America. In examining the personal evolution of Nina Simone and the broader societal changes, my research brings together cultural, political and intellectual histories, which illustrates how figures like Nina were pivotal in shaping resistance movements for African Americans. Using her a case study in my research project has been incredibly fruitful, allowing me to engage with the themes I’m deeply passionate about – gender and race within the American context – and understanding their impacts on an incredibly personal level. It also highlighted just how overlooked Nina Simone is; though celebrated as a musical icon, her contribution to the civil rights and feminist movements remain significantly understudied. Certainly, this makes for exciting research: digging through archives, furiously highlighting her autobiography, dissecting her thoughts and reflections, and then juxtaposing these findings with the ideas of key intellectuals and leaders of her time to discover how they connected – or contrasted! This is often followed by overly excited, far-too-long email to my supervisor (apologies, Lee) where I gush about my latest discoveries and how incredible she is. The brilliant part of having a supervisor, though, is they usually match your enthusiasm, and suddenly a “look what I found!” turns into a whole chapter of analysis.
Musical Division, “Singing in a small group with Lorraine Hansberry and Nina Simone” The New York Public Library Collections, 1963. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/5d9a7e60-2cf4-0135-0613-0fc77b59adf9
Though the scope initially felt overwhelming, it proved to be a perfect size – big enough to cover the nuances of the topic, yet focused enough to stop the research from running away with itself. For an entire year, I was immersed in discovering and researching Nina Simone and 20th-century America. Skeletal ideas that I had been tossing around gradually blossomed into well-structured project. There is an unmatched sense of satisfaction in witnessing an academic piece you’ve designed and nurtured evolve into a comprehensive body of work. The MRes course is perfectly tailored for those who like to have creative control and the space to freedom to focus on their own specialist content, which is an added bonus if you are looking to further your academic studies but there are no available MAs which aligns to your topic area. Whilst the main body of the MRes is occupied in undertaking the dissertation, there are other assignments due such as a Literature Review, Research Proposal and Poster Presentation. Each of these assignments are extremely helpful in laying out the bare bones of your project, your key arguments and the existent body of research you will refer to. It will not only help you feel more confident in your project, as it will force you to critically examine your own work, but it will help you develop key skills such as critical thinking, research methodology and effective articulation of complex ideas – all highly attractive skills for employability.
So, readers of the History Blog Site! Heed my call – don’t overlook the Masters of Research (MRes) Course. If you enjoyed, are currently enjoying or enjoy the idea of undertaking your dissertation, designing and leading a project tailored to themes that fascinate you, and you’re curious about deepening your academic studies, I urge you to consider the MRes. For me, it built on the skills I developed during my undergraduate years and become of the most transformative and rewarding period of my academic journey. And if you’re thinking of pursuing a PhD in the future, the MRes is the perfect stepping stone, helping you develop fundamental individual research skills that will prepare you to undertake rigours of doctoral research, including independent study, critical analysis and project management.
UoP Senior Lecturer in history Dr Fiona McCall had the following post published today on the website of the Ecclesiastical History Society, in which she discusses the extraordinary role of the military in Interregnum religious life.
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
Recent UoP history graduate Rebekah Sistig’s dissertation looked at how inherited racism divided members of the second-wave feminist movement in the USA. She discusses her research below, with some good tips on breaking down the process. Rebekah’s supervisor was Dr Lee Sartain.
Angela Davis, Betty Friedan, bell hooks and Gloria Steinem – all icons of the second wave feminist movement in the US, all women who dedicated their lives to fight against sexism. But were they truly united in their fight against the patriarchy? Was the supposed ‘sisterhood’ all it was chalked up to be? Judging by their contrasting books, organisations, ideologies, and social groups, I think it may not be.
The 1960s and 1970s in the US was a time of immense social change and political movements, all of which interacted and influenced each other. Many of the women who were at the forefront of the feminist movement were also heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement, the New Left movement and many others. The impact of these movements all occurring in the same time period lead to great divides in ideological thought even within the movements themselves. In the feminist movement there was much divide over which tactics were most effective in achieving equality amongst men and women and how best to use the movement’s resources.
U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) 101454320; IHM: C00945
Through my dissertation, I sought to investigate why and how black and white feminists were divided in their cultures and experiences throughout the second wave movement. I investigated key literature, spanning from Friedan’s mighty The Feminine Mystique to grassroots magazines like Azalea: A Magazine by and for Third World Lesbians, and organisations as large as NOW: the National Organization for Women, founded in 1966, to as small as Bread and Roses, a socialist women’s collective founded in 1969. What I concluded was that the divide between white and black feminists was fuelled by decades of racial discrimination and exacerbated by white feminists’ lack of accountability and acknowledgement of their inherited racism in ideological theory and practice. This led to a necessity for black feminists’ to create their own feminist spaces, cultures, and ideology in order for them to tackle the duel oppression they faced in the US.
Members of NOW including Betty Friedan (left)
My decision to research the experiences and cultures of women during the second wave movement came from a specific lecture I had during my second year of learning. In the lecture the different forms of feminist ideology were being described, beginning with liberal feminism and trickling down to black feminism and intersectionality. I found myself asking how this separation in ideology had occurred and how this separation may have represented itself in the lives of black and white feminists of the 1970s. Did it change the clothes they wore? The music they listened to? The books they read? This is where I began my research. I began researching feminist music and fashion of the 1970s which I soon found a challenging endeavour, both because of the growing complexity of some of the reading I was finding and due to the seemingly limited amount of historical analysis of feminist culture – particularly relating to black women. So my comparison began to look rather one sided, with many sources either referring to ‘feminists’ as one unified group or focusing blatantly on white feminist groups. So, I expanded my topic outward.
I went back to my second year lecture reading list, as well as one which my supervisor, Dr Lee Sartain, had provided me with after my dissertation proposal, and spent the start of my third year familiarising myself with the wider movement and the most prominent pieces of analysis on the topic – scholars like bell hooks, Wini Breines and Margaret A. Simons to name a few. While doing this foundational research was where my supervisor was most helpful. When I was unsure or unaware of a particular book, organisation, or individual, my supervisor was extremely helpful in recommending reading and documentaries to familiarise myself with certain aspects of the second wave feminist movement.
Writing your dissertation can be an extremely daunting task. From the word count, the structural formalities, referencing, researching and even your acknowledgements, it can be extremely stressful and overwhelming. A helpful tactic for writing your dissertation is to follow your initiative when it comes to your research and to choose a topic which interests you, or at least one you think you would be able to write 10,000 words about. Either way by the end of your writing you might find yourself completely sick of your topic, I know I certainly did at times.
What I found most helpful in regulating my own stress and keeping my research and writing somewhat manageable was to break it all down as much as possible. I viewed the dissertation as three 2,500 word essays (each one a chapter) put together, one on the historiography surrounding my topic, and two based off of the most comparable aspects of black and white feminist cultures – literature and organisations. Then I broke each chapter down even further. The historiography chapter I divided into different debates/issues which existed in existing research on the second wave movement. Due to my dissertation being a comparison, I was able to divide my second and third chapters into two sections, one focusing on black feminists and the other on white feminists. Once I had broken down my workload into what seemed more manageable, I did my research in sections as well, focusing on one second of my dissertation at a time, allowing me to relax a little bit more.
I’m sure many of my fellow graduates will agree that your final year of study goes much quicker than you would expect! Between your dissertation, assessments, final year dinners, parties, and nights out, to your graduation, your final year is one to remember. Try to stop and smell the roses, look after yourself and your peers, and be proud of all that you have and will accomplish!
