Leslie James, Queen Mary University of London
By Leslie James, Arista Ajidele, Matheus Da Silva-Armson, Naimah Islam and Shi Jinh Yang
In May 2024 the QMUL School of History, with assistance from the Social History Society BME Grant Scheme, ran our first intake of a new programme, ‘Widening Histories’. This programme includes a week-long ‘summer school’ at the end of undergraduate second-year, to be followed by workshops as a cohort in their final year. They receive a bursary for each day of the summer school to offset costs of missing paid summer employment. Ten second-year undergraduate students, selected through a competitive application process, spent four days with historians from the School as well as visiting speakers and had a research trip to the Weston Library Special Collections in Oxford. The programme focuses on two goals: first, to provide practical guidance on how to pursue postgraduate study. This includes frank and honest discussion about existing barriers and biases in universities and the profession, as well as opportunities they deserve to pursue. The first day included sessions on “Making your Research Your Own” and “What is the university, the academy, what can pathways look like?” At the end of these sessions students were asked to share one word that summed up their impression about academic research after these talks. They shared: introspection, discovery, choices, authenticity, ethics/values, options, self-belief, curiosity, origin, integrity.
Our second goal is to nurture their curiosity and passion for history through practical examples and active experience of doing research. We held two separate sessions of ‘Lightning Presentations’ from staff in the School, who spoke about: 1) “A surprise I encountered in the archive,” and 2) “What did I do with what I found?” During our visit to the Weston library each student was able to view a primary source related to their area of interest. The following day they worked with our Senior Writing Tutor to draft poster presentations about the source they encountered. On the final day they presented their work to the cohort and staff from the School. The posters were exhibited at a final reception with two guests whom they invited, who represented carers/ support network. This final event was an important combination of inspiring their curiosity and passion and addressing the practical aspects of pursuing further education: they showcased their own work to their support network. Through the posters and conversation with staff, parents and carers can better envision and then help to support the students’ goals.
What follows are several participant responses to the following question: How did your ideas about what research looks like change throughout the week?
Arista: Before the Widening Histories Summer School, I thought that research, at least in my area of research (intellectual history) was easily accessible but limited in nature – from my knowledge, primary and secondary literature could easily be found either online or in the university library – however, this also meant that I assumed that sources of intellectual history were limited to what I could find in books. By the end of the week, I realised that this was not the case, as I realied that intellectual history can be found in a range of sources – notably, through the personal letters of the author(s) / themes concerned, which additionally provided personal insights into the intellectual thought of the time period / author(s). Additionally, I realised that letters are such an undervalued and underused source when it comes to researching the field of intellectual history, and knowing this, I now seek to incorporate letters into my dissertation, which centres on intellectual history in the late 17th and 18th century. Overall, the week provided me with an amazing insight into the different modes in which intellectual history can be found, and how these under researched sources can be utilised to advance research into the field.
Matheus: Our visit to the Oxford archives was an eye opening experience for me. Fundamentally it was an exercise in fulfilling my academic curiosity by handling, interpreting and working with primary material. Beyond that, the visit offered practical insights into the realities of archival research. Coming out of the archive I felt armed with a new historical vocabulary that makes me feel empowered to take on my final year of study. But the fact of the matter is that in 2024, the physical archive isn’t a unique space anymore. In today’s digital age, traditional archives face a challenge of relevancy and growth. A sad reality acknowledged by everyone I met at the Oxford Archive is that ultimately the bulk of the historical collection in the Bodleian has been shaped by chains of colonialism and classism. This fact made me question the place of the archive as an institution. Online archival resources, such as the internet archive/wayback machine, empower historians to work outside of the institution of a physical archive. I want to see archives more-so sculpted to preserve and promote material that reflects everyday experiences and the lives of the historically overlooked. Ironically enough archives now face the age old “publish or perish” imperative that academic researchers face everyday; if the “traditional archive” stays as it is it will become irrelevant in a digitised age.
Naimah: At first, I thought that research meant looking at old books and spending hours with them, analyzing them front to back and looking at online resources in the same manner. I used to think in order to actually do research you had to be in a much higher level of education like doing a PhD. I hadn’t expected to do research of this level as an undergrad. I expected to just be drafting essays with some basic level of research but not in as depth as we have started to do this year. During the week I was exposed to many types of research like the collecting of oral histories and the use of archives which I had expected to be boring. After hearing about the experiences of researchers in archives I was intrigued, and I realized there’s more to archives than I had thought. After taking a look at some manuscripts myself in the archives and exploring a topic I hadn’t thought of before I appreciated how exciting archives can be when you learn something new or out of the ordinary.
Shi Jing: Throughout the past two years of my history undergraduate degree, I’ve always thought that research was about using online archives, databases and secondary source books from local libraries to reach a response to the proposed essay question. Studying through COVID made me think it was sufficient to rely on the internet and only use local books. During the visit to the Bodleian Library, I realised that not all sources are digital for access, and different archives have different collections of history, periods and countries. Hearing various archivists responsible for and knowledgeable in various parts of the history in the library, from African history, British history, the Middle East, and the Ming and Qing dynasties, made the research process more human. They were like a human Google to ask research questions that can direct you to sources unavailable online. It makes the research process very interactive and less lonely. Because of the vast collection in the archive, many sources are yet to be exhausted, so it felt exciting to uncover the voices from a part of the history. By the end of the week, I found that it expanded my understanding of other research methodologies to explore for my dissertation next year.