History News
Historic Venetian record restored
BBC News have published an article on the restoration of a historic Venetian record featuring History's Professor Luca Mola.
Prof Mola, who rediscovered the document, said it was a "unique window into the active trade routes that brought east and west together" between the 13th and 15th centuries.
Early Alistair Cooke episodes found on B-side of old opera recordings
Head of Department, Professor Tim Lockley MBE, features in a Times article about the discovery of three complete and two partial copies of Alistair Cooke’s famous ‘Letter from America’ series, dating from the late 1940s and the early 1950s, which were missing from the BBC archives.
Read the article in full here.
Prof Lockley has also been interviewed by Vic Minnett of BBC CWR for their feature ‘Vicapedia’ discussing why cricketers wear white jumpers.
Listen again on BBC Sounds from 2:40.
Disability History Month: Fred Reid
Professor Fred Reid, Emeritus Professor and former Head of Department for History, features in the 13 November dated edition of 'insite', the Warwick staff hub, for Disability History month.
Fred, who was 14 years old when he went blind, is known for his work to support blind and disabled people across the UK. He and his wife Etta have even been presented with honorary Warwick degrees to recognise their efforts.
UK Disability History Month (UKDHM) is an annual event which aims to promote disabled people's rights and their struggle for equality now and in the past. This year, UKDHM will take place from 14 November – 20 December 2024. Every year, UKDHM focuses on a theme. This year, the theme is Disability, Livelihood and Employment.
Professor J.E. Smyth on BBC 4's Woman's Hour
Professor J.E. Smyth appeared on BBC 4's Woman's Hour, 30 October 2024, to talk about her 'fiery, page-turning biography' [Sight & Sound] of pioneering American screenwriter and labour leader Mary C. McCall Jr.
Listen to the show at the following link: Woman's Hour - Online scams, US election, Mary McCall Jr - BBC Sounds
Dr Martha McGill features in new documentary series
Dr Martha McGill, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow for the project "Bodies, Selves and the Supernatural in early Modern Britain", will be appearing in a six-part documentary series, 'Witches: Truth Behind the Trials', airing on the National Geographic channel weekly from 8pm today, Wednesday 30 October.
100 ballads prize announcement
The 100 ballads website has won the prestigious Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Creativity in Digital History, awarded by the American Historical Association. Dr Angela McShane, Department of History Honorary Reader, and Professor Christopher Marsh, Queens University Belfast, identified 100 of the biggest musical hits from 17th-century England in the '100 Ballads' project.
Visit the 100 ballads website.
Dr McShane and Prof Marsh will be attending the awards ceremony in New York on 3 January 2025. Congratulations to everyone involved in the project!
American Historical Association Announces 2024 Prize Winners – AHA
Messages To Posterity – Tower Capsules In The German Lands
During a year of research leave, Prof. Beat Kümin has investigated the phenomenon of depositing chronicles and objects into tower spheres on top of prominent buildings like churches, town halls and fortifications. Documented from the Middle Ages to the present, seemingly only in and around territories of the erstwhile Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, the custom provides fascinating insights into how local societies saw themselves and what they wished to pass on to successive generations.
The project, supported by the German Gerda Henkel Foundation, has so far identified over 1600 sites and thousands of separate deposits (at one Zurich church, there were no fewer than 20 between 1505 and 1996). The funder has just released a video series of six episodes (accessible in both English and German) documenting field work in Switzerland in autumn 2023.
Professor Trevor Burnard
The department is very sad to learn of the death of Prof. Trevor Burnard.