As the most famous African American freedom fighter, abolitionist and activist of the nineteenth-century, Frederick Douglass was a pioneer in the social justice movement and campaigned for the end of U.S. enslavement, racism, white domestic terrorism and global oppression. He visited Britain three times and befriended key antislavery activists who also happened to be Unitarians … Continued
By Rebecca Ball, Manchester Metropolitan University This summer, on 21 and 22 July 2026, my co-conference convenor, Professor Rob Ellis, and I had the pleasure of welcoming academics, practitioners, experts, and advocates to the Life Histories in Mind: Mental Ill Health and Learning Disability in Context conference, held at Manchester Metropolitan University. From the … Continued
By Stephen Dunning, University of Exeter The air was fresh and the sunshine warm. The old Dutch fort, its red flag flying from the battlements, was covered with creepers and surrounded by luscious green foliage, a welcome sight after the barren sandy stretches of coast. The shoreline bustled with Swahili and Arab traders, merchants, dock … Continued
Geoffrey Hunt, Benxi Zhang, Alexandra Bogren, Tamar Antin, and Margit Anne Petersen This blog accompanies the authors’ recently published article in Cultural and Social History. From the figure of the ‘wine mom’ to warnings about women ‘drinking like men’ and stigmatising labels such as the ‘lady lush’, contemporary language around female alcohol use is saturated … Continued
Jianhao Xu, Newcastle University. This blog accompanies Xu’s forthcoming article in Cultural and Social History. The historical context examined in this study is the profound social and political crisis experienced by China in the 1930s under the sustained pressure of Japanese aggression. Since the September 18 Incident, Japan’s military expansion in China had intensified continuously, … Continued
Until reading this blog, many of you have probably never heard of the Bradford Reform Jewish community. They are Britain’s third oldest Reform Jewish community and are still active today. Bradford’s earliest Jewish settlers arrived between the 1830s and 1870s. They were predominantly German woollen merchants because Bradford was the centre of the wool trade. … Continued
Blog by Dr Nicholas Collins, relating to his recent Open Access article in Cultural and Social History – read here! I’ve always been fascinated by a deceptively simple historical question: what did ordinary people in the past actually do all day? It’s a relatable topic, but it can be surprisingly difficult to study, and it’s … Continued
Rebekah Higgitt r.higgitt@nms.ac.uk Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin Kilburn-ToppinJ@cardiff.ac.uk with Noah Moxham When you think of scientific activity in seventeenth century London your thoughts probably turn to learned societies and their experiments, like those conducted by the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, witnessed by gentleman natural philosophers. Our book Metropolitan Science suggests that such learned, … Continued
Oral History Project Led by Francesca Humi: Information and Call for Participants In Spring 2020, 22% of Covid-19 related deaths amongst NHS nurses were Filipino, despite them representing only 3.8% of NHS nurses. The pandemic threw health, care, and domestic work into the limelight and exposed the precarious working and visa conditions of many of … Continued
Mary Fraser, University of Glasgow mary.fraser.2@glasgow.ac.uk This so far untold story of the release of policemen into agriculture during the last two years of the First World War was a surprise! 1917 was the year of war weariness, when nothing seemed to go well for Britain: blockading started in earnest from February, a severe … Continued
