History News

We are delighted to announce that Dr Sarah Richardson has been awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Historical Association. Each year the Historical Association awards a small number of Honorary Fellowships to recognise and celebrate outstanding contributions to history and to the Historical Association.

Professor Mark Knights recently joined Melvyn Bragg on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time, to discuss why a Westminster protest against 'Popery' in June 1780 led to widespread rioting across London, lethally suppressed.

The show was originally broadcast on Thursday 2 May, but now available as a podcast on the BBC Radio 4 website.

 
Materials of the Mind: Phrenology, Race, and the Global History of Science, 1815-1920, by Dr James Poskett (University of Warwick), is a new monograph published by University of Chicago Press.

Phrenology was the most popular mental science of the Victorian age. From American senators to Indian social reformers, this new mental science found supporters around the globe. Materials of the Mind tells the story of how phrenology changed the world—and how the world changed phrenology.

This is a story of skulls from the Arctic, plaster casts from Haiti, books from Bengal, and letters from the Pacific. Drawing on far-flung museum and archival collections, and addressing sources in six different languages, Materials of the Mind is an impressively innovative account of science in the nineteenth century as part of global history. It shows how the circulation of material culture underpinned the emergence of a new materialist philosophy of the mind, while also demonstrating how a global approach to history can help us reassess issues such as race, technology, and politics today.

Details of all the monographs and edited collection of the Warwick University History Department's current academic staff are available online, and the details of all the monographs and edited collection of the Warwick University History Department's emeritus academic staff are also available online.

 
Congratulations to those History Department staff and students who are on the longlist for this year's University Staff Awards:

• Inspirational Leadersip: Benjamin Redding, Claudia Aoraha
• Outstanding Contribution: Claudia Aoraha
• Public Engagement Contribution: Rachel Bennett
• Research Contribution: Claire Shaw
• Unsung Hero: Colin Storer, Sheilagh Holmes

For the full longlist, please see the University Awards 2019 webpages.

Former undergraduate student Jo-Ann Owusu turned her excellent BA dissertation from the ‘HI31Z Sexualities, Ethnicity, Class: Reinterpreting the Holocaust’ module into an essay in History Today.

James Piggott, undergraduate student at the Warwick University History Department, has been selected to present at the British Conference of Undergraduate Research this April. James has provided the following information regarding his forthcoming presentation:

My presentation presents two related ideas. Firstly, video-games should be considered a historically-relevant medium, through their capacity to both generate narratives and lessons of the past. Subsequently, the issue of censorship – the doctoring of the past when creating said narratives – is equally detrimental to history within video-games as in alternative formats. The historical significance of censorship within video-games, however, has been largely ignored, due to the ‘trivial’ or ‘ludified’ nature of video-games. As a result, the trivialisation and undermining of the historical practice remains within video-games.

These arguments are covered over three sections. The first unpacks several criticisms of video-games, in turn showing the medium’s historical capacity. The second uses the example of Nazism to describe and explain the presence of censorship within video-games. The final section links these two ideas, discussing the historical impact of censorship within video-games, and why the ‘ludic frame’ of video-games seemingly shadows their equally significant ‘historical frame’.

I hope that, with this paper, video-games will be taken more seriously within academia. I hope to demonstrate their potential utility for the historical practice, and, subsequently, why protecting them from censorship is important. The historical field will be greatly enhanced when developers and historians are not fearful of presenting their novel or controversial arguments. If censorship is abhorrent in alternative historical formats, so should it be in video-games.

This will entail providing a brief 10 minute presentation to a variety of different undergraduate researchers and experts; there will then be time for a short Q&A afterwards to answer any queries or loose ends.

BCUR - the British Conference of Undergraduate Research - is a yearly conference aimed at promoting and sharing undergraduate research in all disciplines. It is a fantastic opportunity to receive feedback and interest in one's work, and to meet with fellow researchers and academics. This year, the conference is being hosted at the University of South Wales, and consists of both oral and poster presentations.

The Conversation has published an article by Dr Rosa Salzberg of the Warwick University History Department on the accommodation issues faced by Venice during the Renaissance. Please see the full article on The Conversation's website.

The Warwick University History Department seeks to appoint two full-time Research Fellows for the fixed-term period of thirty-six months to conduct research as part of the Wellcome Trust funded project, What’s at Stake in the Fake? Indian Pharmaceuticals, African Markets and Global Health.

The Warwick University History Department is one of the largest history departments in the UK, with teaching and research notable for its disciplinary range and geographical scope. The Department is comprised of 53 academic staff, 17 postdoctoral staff, 10 support staff, ~1,000 undergraduate students, and ~100 postgraduate students. The Department has a strong international reputation and high rankings in university guides and surveys, and was ranked first in the UK in the last Research Excellence Framework (REF) for the proportion of world-leading research activity (4*) in the Department. The Department is committed to maintaining and promoting equality, diversity and inclusion amongst its staff and student community.

You will have a first degree or equivalent, a PhD in History, Anthropology or a related field, and experience of conducting archival, oral history and/or ethnographic research. Preference will be given to candidates with the ability to conduct research in Gujarati and/or Kiswahili.

If you have not yet been awarded your PhD but are near submission or have recently submitted your PhD, any offers of employment will be made as Research Assistant on level 5 of the University grade structure (£29,515). Upon successful award of your PhD and evidence of this fact, you will be promoted to Research Fellow on the first point of level 6 of the University grade structure (£30,395 pa).

All applications must be accompanied by a CV and covering letter. Short-listed candidates will be required to provide names of two referees as well as a writing sample (of not more than 10,000 words). For the full advert, job description, and a link to the application form, please see the Warwick University HR website. Please direct all informal inquiries to the project PI, Dr Sarah Hodges, at S.Hodges@warwick.ac.uk.

Closing Date: 23:59pm on Thursday 11th April