History News

 
Professor Peter Marshall of the Warwick University History Department has been interviewed by Kurt Manwaring reagrding his new publication, Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation. The full interview is available on the From The Desk website and details of all the History Department's academic publications are available on the History Department website.

Kurt Manwaring is a freelance writer and contributor to many news sites, and holds a Master of Public Administration degree from the University of Utah.

Dr James Poskett explains the grisly details behind the theft of Joseph Haydn’s skull for Classic FM’s new true crime podcast, Case Notes.

Permanent Position
Department of History
Senior Research Fellow / Assistant Professor in the History of Medicine
Wellcome Trust University Award
£39,992 - £47,722 pa

The Department of History seeks to appoint an Assistant Professor in the History of Medicine. You will conduct research in the history of medicine, and be prepared to work in collaboration with colleagues within the Centre for the History of Medicine, the History Department, and across the University. You will be expected to build research networks in your specialism beyond the University.

You will have a proven record of achievement in research, with clear potential for/or demonstrated excellence in publication in an area or areas of the history of medicine. You will have undergraduate teaching experience, and experience of/or the potential to engage in postgraduate teaching. You will have knowledge of applying for funding, and the potential to participate in collaborative grant initiatives and management. You will be expected to participate as appropriate in the administration of the History Department.

While we encourage applications across all time periods and subject areas, we are particularly keen to attract candidates with a strong research and publication record in the history of medicine in Britain or British Empire after c.1800, as well as work that crosses interdisciplinary boundaries, to include history of science and technology, anthropology, and geography.

You will initially be funded by the Wellcome Trust University Award scheme. Please note that the appointment is a two-stage process, with the University of Warwick nominating the preferred candidate for consideration by the Wellcome Trust for a University Award. This candidate, on nomination to the Wellcome Trust, will be required to produce a funding application, outlining a major research project resulting in high quality outputs to be conducted within the University Award period. Please note that no appointment will be made without a successful application for a Wellcome Trust University Award.

You will initially be appointed as a Senior Research Fellow for the first three years, and then transfer to the permanent post of Assistant Professor at the start of your fourth year.

All applications must be accompanied by a CV and covering letter. Writing samples may be requested from candidates during the latter stages of the recruitment process and should not be submitted with the initial application.

Please direct all informal inquiries to WarwickHistory@warwick.ac.uk.

Closing Date: 22 March 2018

Call For Papers

The Masculine Worlds of Race and Power: Objects, Practices and Emotions in Colonial and Post-Colonial Societies in the Long Nineteenth Century

Keynote Speaker: Pieter Spierenburg, Erasmus University

Plenary Lecture Delivered by: tbc

Date: 5th May 2018

Location: University of Warwick

Funded by the Humanities Research Centre & Global History Centre

We invite individual proposals for fifteen-minute papers. Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to masculineworlds@gmail.com by 28th February 2018, along with a short biography.

For more details, please see the full CFP.

 
Susan Carruthers, Professor in American History at the Warwick University History Department, has had her article, 'When Americans Were Afraid of Being Brainwashed', published in The New York Times online, and in print in the Sunday Review section on Sunday 21st January 2018.

 
'Trouble at the Mill: Factory Law and the Emergence of Labour Question in Late Nineteenth-Century Bombay' is a new monograph by Dr Aditya Sarkar of the Warwick University History Department, published by OUP India.

The book uses the Factory Acts of the late nineteenth century as an entry point into the early history of labour relations in India, specifically the mill industry of Bombay. It unites legal and social history in a manner which differs from most social histories of labour, and offers a new perspective on the constitution of industrial relations in colonial India.

The Factory Act passed by the Government of British India in 1881 produced the first official definition of 'factories' in modern Indian history as workplaces using steam power and regularly employing over 100 workers. It imposed certain minimal restrictions upon the freedom of employers in a limited range of industrial workplaces and invested factory workers, most explicitly children, with a slim set of immunities and entitlements. In 1891, the Factory Act was amended: factories were redefined as workplaces employing over 50 workers, the upper age limit of legal 'protection' was raised, weekly holidays were established, and women mill-workers were brought within its ambit. In its own time, factory law was experienced as a minor official initiative, but it connected with some of the most potent ideological debates and political oppositions of the age.

This book takes these two pieces of labour legislation as an entry point into the history of 'industrial relations' (the term did not yet exist in its present sense) in colonial India, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century combining the legal and social history which diverges from most studies of Indian workers. It identifies an emergent 'factory question' built on the problem of protective labour legislation. The cotton-mill industry of Bombay, long familiar to labour historians as one of the nodal points of modern Indian capitalism, is the principal focal point of this investigation. While this is a book about law and regulation, it is neither a legislative nor a policy history. While it is preoccupied with the history of factory legislation, it does not offer a full narrative that takes this as its 'object'. And while the book focuses on Bombay's cotton mills, it contains significant departures both from the city and its major industry. A number of questions which have only rarely been thematized by labour historians-the ideologies of factory reform, the politics of factory commissions, the routines of factory inspection, and the earliest waves of strike action in the cotton textile industry-are raised in this book.

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

The History Department is recruiting a 'Postgraduate and Research Coordinator' to join the Department's team of dedicated support staff. The postholder will be responsible for the management and coordination of the support for postgraduate study in the Department, including direct support to the Director of PGR Studies and the Director of PGT Studies, and also responsible for contributing to the support for research in the Department. The post is full-time and permanent, and has a closing date for applications of 1st February 2018. All applications must be submitted online.

Please direct all informal inquiries to the History Departmental Administrator, Mr Robert Horton (R.S.Horton@warwick.ac.uk).

Dr Claire Shaw of the Warwick University History Department has been named in Australian Book Review's Books of the Year 2017, recommended by Mark Edele:

"Claire L. Shaw’s Deaf in the USSR: Marginality, community, and Soviet identity, 1917–1991 (Cornell) is a landmark in the history of disability and the Soviet welfare state. A stunning first book, it covers the entire Soviet experience from a thought-provoking perspective."

The full range of monographs and edited collections written or edited by the Warwick University History Department's academic staff is available online.