History News

 
The European History Research Centre (EHRC) has been established by the Department of History to encourage inter-disciplinary research and collaboration at the University of Warwick. It sees its scope in broad terms, ranging across at least the last fifteen centuries and taking a very wide view of the borders of Europe and European connections and influence. Its central intellectual principle is that encouraging people to think outside their natural disciplinary and period comfort zones pays dividends in terms of intellectual advances, innovative research, funding applications, and wider impact.

The Centre’s first formal conference, Napoleon’s Last Stand: 100 Days in 100 Objects, was held on July 1^st 2014 and exemplifies the Centre’s aspirations. There were twenty-six papers in the course of the day, from specialists in French, English, Italian and German studies; historians, political scientists, and musicologists; contributors from North America, France, Italy, Belgium, Ireland, Spain and from all over Britain; and with discussions of everything from military planning and organisation, domestic diaries and letters, women pamphleteers in Belgium, romantic poetry and painting, millenarian prophecy, Egyptian national anxieties, popular catechisms in Germany, local elections and national plebiscites in France, the battle of Waterloo, and English, French, Dutch, Spanish and Russian caricature. Moreover, the day concluded with a concert of English, French and German songs relating to the 100 Days and the battle of Waterloo, and a performance of scenes from a play written by a British soldier in captivity in France during the 100 days. Cross-national, interdisciplinary, innovative, and bringing together a wide audience of scholars, the event was an auspicious start to the Centre’s activities. The papers from the conference will form the basis for the web-exhibition that will be launched in January 2015and will trace the events of the 100 days and worldwide reactions to them over the subsequent six months.

For more details of the European History Research Centre and its activities, please see the EHRC website.
 

Congratulations to the prize-winning undergraduate students of the History Department for their excellent academic performances in 2013/14:

• First Year UG 'Beaumanoir-Hart' History Prize for Best Overall Performance
  Joanne Young (History)
• First Year Making History Project Prize
  Anna Wilson (History and Politics) for the project 'How Present was the Threat of Nuclear War in the Everyday Lives of British Children in the Early to Mid-1960s?'
• First Year UG CAS Prize for Best Overall Performance
  Will Britton-Minney (CAS)
• Second Year UG History Prize for Best Overall Performance
  Reece Decastro (History)
• Second Year UG CAS Prize for Best Overall Performance
  Ella Passingham (CAS)
• Final Year UG 'Iain Smith' History Single-Honours Prize for Best Overall Performance
  Alice Bennington (History with Year Abroad)
• Final Year UG 'Roger Magraw' History Joint-Honours Prize for Best Overall Performance
  Holly Winter (History and Politics)
• Final Year UG 'Chris Clark' CAS Prize for Best Overall Performance
  Sam Underwood (CAS)
• Final Year UG Long Essay Prize
  Lewis Smith (History and Politics Year Abroad), for the essay 'A Vast Stage of the Possible: Space and Radical Protest in Western Europe, 1960-1982'
• Felix Dennis UG Dissertation Prize
  Oliver Hirst (History with Year Abroad), for the dissertation 'Mapping the Unknown: the Geographical and Iconographical Representation of the New World in Sixteenth-century European Cartography'

Details of all of the departmental prizes and past winners can be found on the Student Prizes webpages.
 

 
Professor David Anderson of the History Department has been awarded a Faculty of Arts Research Impact Award 2014. The awards were presented on 3rd July 2014 by Professor Simon Swain, Chair of the Faculty of Arts and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Arts and Social Sciences.

Introduced in 2011, these awards recognize those individuals who have undertaken public engagement with the intention of achieving the greatest possible impact in innovative or interesting ways, rather than recognizing the achievement of impact itself.

The Warwick University History Department is currently recruiting seven teaching fellows, one full-time and six part-time, for the 2014/15 academic year:

• TF in Modern History (100% FTE for 9 months)
• TF in African History (50% FTE for 9 months)
• TF in Medieval History (50% FTE for 9 months)
• TF in Caribbean History (40% FTE for 9 months)
• TF in Modern US History (50% FTE for 9 months)
• TF in the History of Medicine (70% FTE for 9 months)
• TF in the History of Florence and Venice in the Renaissance (100% FTE for 12 weeks, based in Venice)

The closing date for applications is the 21st or 22nd July 2014, depending on which post candidates are interested in.

Giorgio Riello is a Professor of Global History and Culture at Warwick and joined the Department of History in January 2007. His area of expertise lies in the history of globalisation, trade and manufacturing with a particular focus on industrialisation and economic divergence.

Professor Nigel Thrift, Vice-Chancellor said:

IAS, under its last Director Professor Richard Aldrich, has clearly delivered on the goals the University set for it to enrich the research environment for postgraduate students and early career scholars.

I am delighted that Professor Giorgio Riello has agreed to take that work forward as the next Director of IAS. As one of IAS’s main goals is to enhance opportunities for international engagement with Warwick, I think that it is particularly fitting that we have appointed an award winning researcher renowned for his work in global history.”

Giorgio has been in charge of a number of research projects and networks, the most recent of which is the Leverhulme-funded 'Luxury Network' in collaboration with several museums and universities and the Warwick Business School. He has been a member of the Global History and Culture Centre since its foundation and co-directed the Centre in 2013-14. Since 2010 he has also been the Director of the Pasold Research Fund, a charity established in 1964 for the promotion of research in textiles, dress and fashion.

International Workshop at the Center for Interdisciplinary Polish Studies, Europe University Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder, Germany, 12/13 June 2015.

Co-Organized by the European History Research Centre, University of Warwick and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Polish Studies, Europe University Viadrina.

 
The History Department is saddened by the news that the publisher, poet and enterpreneur Felix Dennis has died. In 1999, Felix Dennis generously sponsored a prize for the best final-year undergraduate dissertation at the Warwick University History Department from 1999 to 2013.

Professor Giorgio Riello's book Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World won the 2014 World History Association Bentley Book Prize.