![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Lucy-Bricknell-on-Dartmoor.jpg\")
<\/a>Like many history students UoP history and politics alumni Lucy Bricknell didn’t leave university with a clear plan of what she wanted to do next.\u00a0 But, as she explains below, she discovered that the skills in researching, analysis and writing she had developed in the course of her studies,\u00a0 prepared her well for a career in communications.<\/p>\nRead More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is a question we are often asked at Open Days.\u00a0 Our own Dr Jodi Burkett has the answers!<\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read more<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our own Professor Dave Andress has a new journal article published in the latest issue of the Historical Journal<\/em>, analysing cahiers de dol\u00e9ances<\/em>, registers of local grievances presented at the start of the French Revolution.<\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read more<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read more<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read more<\/a><\/p>\n Portsmouth was strategically important in the seventeenth century, but relatively little has been written on it. For their second-year Working with the Past project a group of UoP history students tried to discover more about three key Portsmouth figures from this time. In this first post in a series, Callum Ireland writes about the Dutch engineer who rebuilt the fortifications which shaped the Portsmouth seafront today.<\/p>\n Read more<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read more<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Miles Orr’s third-year history dissertation explored the origins of jazz by examining the lives and lyrics of three key African-American artists: Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Bolden, supervised by Dr Lee Sartain, who has a special interest in Louisiana’s history.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dr Rob James, UoP Senior Lecturer and Course Lead for the MA Naval, Maritime and Coastal History, has recently published an article, co-written with one of the MA\u2019s alumni students, Martin Backhouse, in the journal War in History. <\/em>The article examines the portrayal of Royal Navy submarines and their crews in the world\u2019s first weekly illustrated newspaper, the Illustrated London News<\/em>, during the Second World War.<\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n History at university is all about the detail \u2013 but not so detailed as to lose the overall plot.\u00a0 How do people in hundreds of towns and cities across a country combine in order to create<\/em> a movement?\u00a0 This grassroots approach to the African American civil rights movement has been the recent historical trend \u2013 the lives of activists in communities across the nation that form change <\/em>and may never be heard about by most people but are intimately connected to social revolution and national reform.\u00a0 Lee Sartain, UoP Senior Lecturer in history,\u00a0 writes about the 64 parishes project in Louisiana which records the lives of civil rights activists there, and his own contributions to it.<\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ashleigh Hufton is remembered with great affection by the history team as a student who contributed keenly to history seminars from the outset and worked hard to develop her skills further during her studies in history at the University of Portsmouth from 2018 \u2013 2021.\u00a0 Ashleigh has since been enjoying great success teaching history at secondary level.\u00a0 She writes about her studies at Portsmouth, and what she has gained from them since graduating.<\/p>\n Read More<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Love it or hate it, you can\u2019t escape it: the Health and Safety at Work Act has been an important part of UK working life (and wider) for 50 years.<\/p>\n To mark its 50th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary, a day-long symposium was held in London on 25 November 2024:\u00a0Health & Safety at Work Act \u2013 50 years on: still fit for purpose?<\/a><\/p>\n It was hosted by the Trade Union & Employment Forum of\u00a0History & Policy<\/a>, and brought together practitioners, trades unionists and academics \u2013 including the University of Portsmouth History team\u2019s\u00a0Dr Mike\u00a0Esbester<\/a>.\u00a0 Mike\u2019s research focuses on histories of safety, risk and accident prevention in modern Britain.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
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Do not seek pleasure – guidelines for 17th century widows<\/h2>\n
<\/a>In this post, written for the Folger Library, Dr Maria Cannon writes about a manuscript guide to early modern widowhood she discovered while on a fellowship there. Suffice to say, having fun is out!<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
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An Elizabethan clergyman side-steps scandal<\/h2>\n
<\/a>After the Protestant Reformation, clergymen could marry, and increasing numbers did so out of inclination and to show they were committed to Protestantism. The Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 placed regulatory conditions on clerical behaviour, including marriage, although it was still controversial to the public and disliked by Queen Elizabeth I. Second-year UoP history student Madeleine East discusses this historical context using witness depositions from the Winchester Consistory Court, dated March 1571, relating to the marriage proposals of one Hampshire clergyman, a document that she studied for the second-year module Underworlds: Crime, Deviance & Punishment in Britain, 1500-1900<\/a><\/p>\nThe Royal Navy and the US\/Iran War<\/h2>\n
<\/a>This week our own Dr Matthew Heaslip was interviewed by multiple national and regional media outlets to help contextualise Britain\u2019s response via the Royal Navy to America\u2019s war on Iran.<\/section>\n<\/h2>\n
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Why do a history degree when you can just ask AI what happened?<\/h2>\n
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The conflicted loyalties of gunmakers during the English Civil Wars and after<\/h2>\n
<\/a>English Civil War royalism is often stereotyped as elitist, but this was not necessarily the case, as MRes student Natalie Lejeune found when researching the activities of civil war gunmakers.\u00a0 Prior royal service often inclined these specialist craftsmen towards the Royalists.\u00a0 After the Royalist defeat, they worked for a new Republican Government prepared to tolerate their dubious loyalties in exchange for their much-needed skills.\u00a0 Yet their loyalties remained conflicted, with some secretly supplying Royalist conspiracists.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
Guiding the next generation of history students to become their best selves<\/h2>\n
<\/a>James Farrar finished his history studies at Portsmouth in 2021. Although James had always been set on a career in teaching, he decided to gain some hands on experience before studying for his PGCert\u00a0 He describes some of the highs and lows of his past four years gaining experience as a teaching assistant, student engagement worker, and cover supervisor, an honest and humorous appraisal which should be invaluable to current students aiming to follow a similar career trajectory.<\/p>\nWas mid-seventeenth century Britain a dystopian society?<\/h2>\n
<\/a>UoP history lecturer Dr Fiona Mccall was interviewed in December for the 1984 Today!<\/a> podcast on all things dystopian, intrigued by the concept of thinking about the 1640s and 1650s in this way.\u00a0 How did the strictures of the real puritan regime of mid-17th century Britain compare with fictional dystopias like those of Orwell, Huxley, John Wyndham, Margaret Atwood and John Christopher?<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
Connecting past and present: how my history degrees led me into heritage marketing and retail<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/em>UoP history alumni Nia Picton-Phillips writes about how her experiences at Portsmouth gave her the skills she needed to succeed in heritage marketing and retail at Chippenham Museum in Wiltshire. Nia studied for a BA and then an MRes in history, researching holocaust memorialisation.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
Who do I trust? Analysing local grievances at the start of the French Revolution<\/h2>\n
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Uncovering seventeenth-century Portsmouth: the assassination of the King\u2019s favourite<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Portsmouth was strategically important in the seventeenth century, but relatively little has been written on it. For their second-year Working with the Past project a group of UoP history students tried to discover more about three key Portsmouth figures from this time. In this second post in a series, Olivia Newby writes about the infamous murder of the Duke of Buckingham on Portsmouth High Street and how it became a catalyst for political change in the 17th century.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
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Alice Diamond, ‘Queen of the Terrors\u2019 in the interwar London underworld<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Emily Burgess, who studied for PhD in history at the University of Portsmouth, has had a paper published in Women\u2019s History Review<\/em>. The paper looks at press depiction of Alice Diamond, leader of the interwar Forty Thieves gang.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
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Venice\u2019s shifting relationship with their Ottoman Neighbours: between religious crusades and economic d\u00e9tente<\/h2>\n
<\/a>UoP history student Elliott Thomas examines the surprisingly pragmatic relationship between Catholic Venice and the Islamic Ottoman Empire, which caused the Venetians first to fight against the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto in defence of Cyprus, and then, motivated by economic considerations, to betray their Catholic allies in signing a peace treaty with the Turks resulting in three-quarters of a century of d\u00e9tente.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
The man who fortified Portsmouth: uncovering the work of Sir Bernard De Gomme<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nCommunity Collaboration in Action<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Over the last year, the History team\u2019s Dr Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History, has been working with a local history group to find out more about our region\u2019s railway workers. Here he reveals more about this exciting partnership \u2013 including where you can see what they\u2019ve produced.<\/p>\nVictim or scheming seducer?<\/h2>\n
<\/a>A level studies in history and media led UoP history student Damiana Kun to focus her Portsmouth history dissertation on how a patriarchal screen industry has ignored modern research and continued to attach negative stereotypes to one of history\u2019s most famous and complex women.<\/p>\nLiberation Route Europe goes Live<\/span><\/h2>\n
<\/a>As part of their second-year module, Working with the Past<\/strong>, second-year history students have been involved with Liberation Route Europe producing the first UK trails for LRE, including one in Portsmouth, highlighting Second World War remembrance sites and stories.\u00a0 This went live over the summer, and was featured by the BBC<\/a> and Radio Solent.<\/span><\/p>\nPeople of the railways<\/h2>\n
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Portsmouth History Graduate is Record Keeper of the Year<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Chloe Anderson-Wheatley has been awarded the title of Record Keeper of the Year award by the Archives & Records Association, to recognise the extensive contribution she has made to record keeping for the Falkland Islands Government.\u00a0 Over the past eighteen months Chloe has significantly raised the profile of the Island\u2019s National Archives service, increased local and international engagement and awareness with the collections, and has built new partnerships.<\/p>\nThe misrepresentation of Catherine De\u2019 Medici\u2019s female rule<\/h2>\n
<\/a>For her third-year dissertation UoP history student Sadie White looked into representations of the French Queen Catherine de’ Medici.\u00a0 As Sadie describes, Catherine\u00a0 has had a hard press over the years, both in her own time, and still today, as represented in contemporary TV and film drama. She is a salutary reminder of how female rule continues to be depicted negatively.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
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How white South Africa obstructed the decolonisation of Southern Africa during the Cold War<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Our second piece by second-year UoP history student Elliott Thomas, shows how a militarily superior South Africa, in a bitter struggle for influence and to maintain its apartheid regime, sought to dominate its neighbours Namibia and Angola.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
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The end of the age of steam and the birth of the modern railways after World War II<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Connor Law’s third-year history dissertation looked at imperatives to modernise the British railway system after a period of stasis during the war, arguing that the process dated back as far as the late Victorian period. Having been hindered but not halted during wartime, it was accelerated after 1948 by the newly-nationalised British Railways, with varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
Charting the perilous deep<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Our own Karl Bell, Associate Professor in Cultural and Social History, has written an exciting new book on the supernatural legends associated with the seafarers of the Atlantic Ocean, from the eighteenth century to the age of steam, and beyond.\u00a0 The modules Karl teaches at Portsmouth include a third-year special subject on Magic and Modernity,<\/em> a new second-year option on The Age of Crisis<\/i> and Victorian Enchantments <\/i>for the MA in Victorian Gothic: History, Literature and Culture.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
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Portsmouth history students launch interactive children\u2019s trail at Portsmouth Cathedral<\/h2>\n
<\/a>UoP history students on the Working with the Past module\u00a0have collaborated with\u00a0Portsmouth Cathedral<\/a> to develop an innovative children’s visitor trail inviting children to explore the cathedral through a series of engaging clues based on real memorials and historical features. Visitors will discover stories of the people commemorated there, such as the unknown sailor from the Mary Rose and the Duke of Buckingham.<\/p>\n\u2018Jazzed Up\u2019: the origins and impact of jazz in America<\/h2>\n
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Researching the life stories of our local railway workers<\/h2>\n
<\/a>In a project sponsored by the university’s Heritage Hub, Dr Mike Esbester has been working collaboratively with members of the Havant Local History Group on the Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts<\/a> project. This researches the life stories of ten local railway workers from the 1870s to 1939, with posters about them placed at Havant railway station.<\/div>\n<\/h2>\n
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The Allied bombing campaign and the destruction of two cities<\/h2>\n
<\/a>In the second of our series of posts from our third-year history dissertation students, Rebekah Money describes the research she carried out for her dissertation on the allied bombing campaign against German cities during World War II. Investigating archival reports on the RAF, Rebecca gained a sense of how the campaign evolved over time.\u00a0 One of the reason the bombing caused such devastating firestorms at Hamburg and Dresden, was because of the use of marker bombs, flares used to illuminate targets at night.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
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Why the Polish Reformation deserves to be remembered<\/h2>\n
<\/a>For his dissertation, third-year UoP history student Jacob Canavan chose to focus on Polish Protestantism which, while largely forgotten and repressed at home, proved to have a significant influence abroad, in spreading ideas which were to influence enlightenment thought across Europe.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
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Looking at memorials and practices of memorialisation<\/h2>\n
<\/a>For their Thinking Like An Historian module<\/a> we take our first-year history students to look at some of the memorials in Portsmouth, and then they write a piece for their portfolio assessment on a memorial of their choice.\u00a0 Students chose memorials in Portsmouth Cathedral, a memorial to Canadian troops who fought at Vimy Ridge in World War One, a memorial to those who served at Croydon airbase and a (not very successful) memorial to the holocaust in Hyde Park.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
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“In God is our trust” – How evangelical Christians became so crucial to Trump’s Republican Party<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Despite being mired in controversy, including being put on trial for paying hush money to cover up an extramarital affair, the support of Evangelical Christians was crucial to Trump’s presidential victory, with Trump winning about 8 out of every 10 Evangelical voters.\u00a0 Second year UoP history student Elliott Thomas discusses the history of how the evangelical Christians and the Republican Party came to be so closely aligned, focusing on the lead up to the Reagan years.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
From a Portsmouth history degree to conserving historic buildings at York<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Mature student Mandy Wrenn was a great influence on the younger students while studying history at Portsmouth, and is still in touch with many of them.\u00a0 Below she describes how she describes how she put the skills she had learned during her Portsmouth history studies to good use when she went on to study (and gain a distinction) for a Masters in Historic Buildings at the University of York.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
Visit to 17th Century Portsmouth<\/h2>\n
<\/a>For the third-year UoP history option Britain in Revolution, students visit Old Portsmouth to see some evidence of Portsmouth\u2019s 17th century history. Here they are outside the house where the Duke of Buckingham was murdered, on the High Street.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/h2>\n
The Devil’s Highway<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a>Our own Professor Brad Beaven has published a new book about Ratcliffe Highway, the heart of London’s sailortown, which had a notorious reputation for knife crime and immorality in the nineteenth century.<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
Adulthood in Britain and the United Stat<\/strong>es<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/a>n November 2024 UoP Senior Lecturer Dr Maria Cannon published an edited collection Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z. <\/a>The collection, published in the Royal Historical Society’s New Perspectives Series with Laura Tisdall of Newcastle University, looks at how ideas of adulthood have changed over the centuries<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
Wartime representations of Royal Navy submarines in the British press <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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64 Parishes: Louisiana\u2019s history of civil rights activism<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nRealising and communicating a love for history, at Portsmouth and beyond<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n50 Years On: the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act<\/h2>\n
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