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

Dr Henry Irving, Leeds Beckett University @drhenryirving One of the most important things I learned during my undergraduate degree was that academics read differently. Critical analysis, the lecturers’ said, was as important as comprehension. I still remember feeling shocked when one explained that they would begin marking an essay by looking at the bibliography. “But, … Continued

Dr Duncan Stone, University of Huddersfield @StoneDunk Writing of the thirteen elite public schools of England in 1891, the educationalist M. J. Rendell unashamedly pointed out that ‘of the “thicks”; “intermediates” and “clever” boys, it is the intermediates: a group of “honest workers with sound headpieces and average wits, who will soon be playing a … Continued