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Global History and Culture Centre Blog

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Golden Fever in the 1920s–30s and the Soviet Reception of Medieval Alchemy

The reception of alchemy in the early USSR remains a completely unknown field. This is despite the fact that many historians now work extensively on the history of alchemy more broadly. However, there were many mentions of alchemy both in the occult and the science literature in Russian in the 1920s and 1930s. In this blog entry, PhD student Sergei Zotov discusses how transnational connections in the beginning of the twentieth century shaped the reception of alchemy in the USSR.


Why Are We Not Reading More Histories on Italian Imperialism and Museum Collections?

PhD student Fleur Martin discusses the challenges of researching and writing histories of Italian imperialism and museum collections. Through the figure of the Italian imperial explorer Vittorio Bottego (1860–97), Martin explores issues of training, historiography, support, and memory. In doing so, Martin reflects on the meaning of 'decolonisation' in the context of Italian museum collections.


‘A Very British Way of Torture’: Researching for a TV documentary

PhD student Niels Boender had a chance to research for, and be part of, the Channel 4 and Al Jazeera documentary ‘A Very British Way of Torture’, also featuring Professor David Anderson. The documentary focuses on the use of torture by the British colonial authorities in Kenya against members of the anti-colonial Man Mau movement, and traces the historical research into official British attempts to cover this up. Niels reflects on the research here.


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