Teaching Sex and Gender in the Age of #MeToo

Professor Alison Twells, Sheffield Hallam University A.Twells@shu.ac.uk @alison_twells The recent case at the University of Warwick, where male students suspended for sharing rape threats on an online group chat were prematurely readmitted, comes as no surprise to anyone with even a cursory acquaintance with studies of the sexual harassment of women students. NUS Reports from … Continued

A History Degree for the C21st

Caitríona Beaumont reflects on the experience of designing a new history degree programme for the twenty first century at a central London post-92 University

Teaching History with Objects

Georgina Brewis and Charlotte Clements are both social historians who work closely with voluntary sector archives. Dr Brewis is Associate Professor in the History of Education at UCL. She is a historian of voluntary action, youth and education and is currently Honorary Secretary of the Social History Society. Dr Clements is Lecturer in History and Course Director of the BA in History at London South Bank University. Her research interests include charity, youth and welfare in modern Britain. 

In their contribution to the Learning & Teaching Exchange, they reflect on creating a ‘curated teaching collection’ that brings object-based learning into a module on the history of voluntary organisations and NGOs at UCL.

Teaching History with Photographs

Dr Beatriz Pichel is Research Fellow at the Photographic History Research Centre, de Montfort University, Leicester. She specializes in photographic history, the history of medicine, the cultural history of war and the history of emotions, and is currently writing a monograph on photography and combatants’ experiences in France during the First World War.

In her contribution to the Learning & Teaching Exchange, she explains how she uses photographical materials in her teaching, introducing History students to photography not only as a visual but also a material practice.

Feeling Your Way Into War

Professor Catriona Pennell is Associate Professor of History at the University of Exeter. She is the author of A Kingdom United: Popular Responses to the Outbreak of the First World War in Britain and Ireland (OUP, 2012; 2014) as well as many articles and chapters on history, education and memory. She sits on the Board of Directors of the International Society for First World War Studies and is an inaugural Associate of the Imperial War Museum Institute.

In her contribution to the Learning & Teaching Exchange, she considers whether there’s a tension between encouraging empathy and teaching the history of the First World War.

Safe Spaces for Colonial Apologists

Dr Jonathan Saha is Associate Professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Law, Disorder and the Colonial State: Corruption in Burma, c.1900 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and numerous articles on colonial and animal history.  He is also a member of the Social History Society’s executive committee and founder of the SHS Network for BME Historians.

In his contribution to the Learning & Teaching Exchange, he discusses the challenges of introducing undergraduate students to thinking critically about Empire.

Beyond Diversification: Decolonising History

Sue Lemos has recently completed a History degree at the University of Warwick, where she also worked with Dr Meleisa Ono-George on issues surrounding BME attainment. She is currently researching The Black Gay and Lesbian Centre in Peckham, 1985-1997.

In her contribution to the Learning & Teaching Exchange she reflects on being one of four speakers on the History and Diversity plenary panel at the 2018 Social History Society conference and the important issues that were discussed.

Family History Enters the Academy

Dr Kristyn Harman is a Senior Lecturer in History in the School of Humanities who specialises in cross-cultural encounters across Britain’s nineteenth-century colonies, and twentieth-century Australasia. Her thematic interests cohere around socio-cultural frontiers, including: transportation to, and within, the British Empire’s penal colonies; frontier warfare; Indigenous incarceration; colonial domesticity; and the Australian and New Zealand home fronts during World War Two.

In her contribution to the Learning & Teaching Exchange, she reflects on the successful establishment of an online diploma in family history at the University of Tasmania.

Academic Posters: A Student’s View

Mads Linnet Perner is a final-year undergraduate at the University of Copenhagen. His first experience of an academic conference was presenting a research poster at the recent Social History Society conference at Keele University, which won the prize generously supported by Bloomsbury Publishing for best student poster.

The research for his poster, ‘Segregated behind the walls: Residential patterns in pre-industrial Copenhagen, 1700-1850’, was completed at Lancaster University. The prize was decided by an open ballot conducted during the conference.

History for Student Practitioners

Dr Triona Fitton is a lecturer at the University of Kent’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research.  She is the author of ‘Hidden History: Philanthropy at the University of Kent’, a book about the history of donations to the University since its charter in 1965. She is the former Director of the MA in Philanthropic Studies in the Centre for Philanthropy at the university, and is currently part of the Student Success project, a university-wide initiative to research and tackle the attainment gap for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

For a roundtable discussion at the Social History Society’s recent annual Conference in Keele, she was tasked with talking about how we teach the history of philanthropy and humanitarianism to student practitioners. In her contribution to the Learning & Teaching Exchange, she reflects on this, where history fits in and why it matters.