The ‘Connected Histories of the BBC’ project at the University of Sussex has launched a new digital resource  – People Nation and Empire – that explores how the BBC has tried to re-imagine itself in the multi-cultural and post-imperial age. The resource includes a large number of clips from programmes not seen since first broadcast several … Continued

The Comma Press have launched a new podcast that will be of interest to social and cultural historians. The series provides in-depth discussions with the writers and historians behind six of the stories featured in the publisher’s ‘Protest: Stories of Resistance’ anthology. The first episode, ‘Never Going Underground’, considers LGBT rights and focuses on a 1988 … Continued

Love stories from the early 20th Century to the late 1960s will be celebrated at the Fitzrovia Chapel this Valentine’s Day, as part of an ambitious international project to reunite them with their families and descendants. The February exhibition called Love Lost and Found features exquisite original wedding photographs from the popular Vintage Wedding Photos … Continued

The BFI has launched a new crowdsourcing platform as part of its ‘Britain on Film’ project. The platform allows people to share their unique knowledge by ‘pinning’ locations to the online map. The project aims to improve the accuracy and depth of the geo-tagging of films within the Britain on Film national collection. In doing so, … Continued

The children’s charity Coram is looking for participants for a focus group on the use of digital archives. The charity was recently awarded HLF development funding for a project – Voices Through Time: The Story of Care – which aims to digitise the Foundling Hospital archive. It is determined to make the resource accessible, appealing … Continued

It has been announced that David Olusoga is to join the University of Manchester as Professor of Public History. The historian, broadcaster and film-maker studied history at the University of Liverpool and began his career as a television producer. Since moving in front of the camera, he has emerged as one of the UK’s foremost … Continued

History, as an academic discipline, has a problem with its lack of diversity. This is a real issue for a field of scholarly activity where seeking to understand the world as it appears from very different perspectives underpins much of what we do.

As Meleisa Ono-George noted in the plenary session of our recent conference (which you can watch here), amongst the 6.1% BME academic staff in UK university History departments there are only 15 black historians. Until this month, there was no black and female History Professor in the country.

That changed when Dr Olivette Otele was promoted from Reader to Professor at Bath Spa University…

The Historic England Archive has recently completed a 12 month project to conserve, digitise, and catalogue 4,071 photographic prints in the Topical Press Agency Medical Collection. The collection of prints show nursing, healthcare, social care and medicine in Britain between 1938 and 1943. Most were very well annotated, providing a remarkable insight into medical treatments … Continued

We were sad to hear recently of the death of Professor Alun Howkins.

Alun left school at 15 for a host of manual and other jobs before returning to education in his early 20s via Ruskin College. After further studies at Oxford and completing a PhD at Essex University, he embarked on a career in which he made a real contribution to the field of social history.

We share some memories from those who knew him.