The Social History Society is pleased to announce that Dr Brodie Waddell will be joining the editorial board of Cultural and Social History in January 2019. He will join Dr Vandana Joshi, Professor David Nash, and the Reviews Editor Dr Kelly Boyd. Professor Barry Doyle is stepping down after a successful term on the Board. … Continued
You may have heard news of the funding threat facing the Black Cultural Archives: https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/black-cultural-archives-funding-letter-a3978136.html We would like to join with other organisations in showing our support for the Black Cultural Archives as an integral asset in our national teaching and research infrastructures and as the only national heritage centre devoted to preserving the histories … 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 SHS wishes to draw attention to this important report by the Royal Historical Society on race, ethnicity and equality within our discipline. We encourage all our members to read it and to share it through their own networks. Our chair, Prof Pamela Cox, attended the launch of the report and will look forward to … Continued
The Social History Society is supporting an event in Oxford that aims to uncover the untold story of Christian Frederick Cole imagery. Cole was Oxford University’s first Black African Scholar 1873, and became the first Black African to practise Law in the English High Court in 1884. His life is the focus of a symposium … Continued
The Social History Society maintains a small fund to encourage one-day conferences, workshops and other specialist meetings run by members of the Society. We give priority to activities that would otherwise remain unfunded and that could lead to publication in Cultural and Social History or provide sessions at the annual conference. The next deadline, for … Continued
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
The Social History Society is setting up a network for Black and minority ethnic (BME) historians. It is being launched in recognition of the under-representation, structural inequalities and racism afflicting UK Higher Education Institutions. Our initiative follows the plenary panel on ‘History and Diversity’ held at our 2018 annual conference, which discussed some of the difficulties facing BME … 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.
It can’t have escaped your attention that the National Health Service celebrated its 70th anniversary this week. The NHS came into being on 5 July 1948. It promised universal healthcare, free at the point of use. The story of the NHS is closely bound to the contemporary British history. So it is no surprise that … Continued
