Dr Oleg Benesch, University of York oleg.benesch@york.ac.uk In spring 2014, the Social History Society Conference at Northumbria University provided a welcome opportunity to visit Newcastle for the first time in some years, and I extended my stay to explore the city, including the various museums, galleries, and the waterfront. I was most interested, however, in … Continued
Edda Nicolson, Wolverhampton University @Edda_Nicolson The General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) was created at the 1899 Trades Union Congress in Manchester, with a view to collecting and administrating a strike fund that could be accessed by affiliates at times of industrial unrest. Within 5 years, they had a membership of over 500,000; by … Continued
In April 1947, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) was authorized to bring 1000 young Holocaust survivors to Canada through the War Orphans Project. The Canadian federal government required all young newcomers to be placed in foster families. This led the CJC to set up a campaign to find potential foster parents. Bringing together scholarship on … Continued
Dr Kate Bradley, University of Kent @katebradleykent Lawyers for the Poor is a project that has a long personal history for me. In 1999, I began volunteering as an archivist at Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in East London, alongside studying for my MA and working in a bookshop. Given my daytime commitments, I … Continued
Dr Ionanna Iordanou, Oxford Brookes University @IoannaIordanou According to conventional wisdom, systematised intelligence and espionage are ‘modern’ phenomena, spanning from the eve of the First World War to the present. Venice’s Secret Service overturns this academic orthodoxy, recounting the arresting story of one of the world’s earliest centrally organised state intelligence organisations. Headquartered in … Continued
Dr Naomi Pullin, University of Warwick naomi.pullin@warwick.ac.uk In Female Friends and the Making of Transatlantic Quakerism, 1650-1750 I provide the first in-depth exploration of British and colonial Quaker women over the movement’s first century. The central question informing my research is how Quakerism’s transition from a radical sect to a settled church altered … Continued
Prof Henrice Altink, Department of History, University of York henrice.altink@york.ac.uk @HenriceAltink It was on my first visit to Jamaica as a PhD student in the 1990s that I noticed the importance of race and colour in Jamaican society. When I went to the bank to cash some travellers’ cheques, I noticed that the doorman … Continued
Dr James Jones, University of Sussex @JamesTJones We all have experiences of visiting the cinema: memories of going as a child; a first independent visit with friends; visiting today to catch the latest superhero blockbuster or to make a pilgrimage to an independent screening. That cinema-going is still a popular past-time in an age … Continued
The house was a miracle of miniature technology, from the pair of Purdy shotguns that actually broke even if they didn’t fire, to the electric lift and working plumbing. It was also packed with beautiful and very tiny works of art and literature that represented a major shift from their creators’ wartime output. C.R.W. Nevinson’s “Paths of Glory” had been banned in 1918 because of its shockingly unpatriotic content of faceless British corpses lying in the trench mud, but his contribution to the dolls’ house was a pretty watercolour of a mountain town.
Dr Victoria Kelley, University for the Creative Arts vkelley@uca.ac.uk Cheap Street tells the story of London’s street markets: Petticoat Lane, Berwick Street, Lambeth Walk and many others. From the 1850s, anything that could be bought in a shop could also be bought in the street markets – they were the butcher, baker, greengrocer, provision … Continued
