Associate Professor Michael Meeuwis (English and Comparative Literary Studies) explores the history of Victorian theatre and, particularly, the Victorians’ love for amateur theatricals at home. Michael makes the link between these performances and how we’re keeping ourselves entertained during lockdown.

In this episode, Professor Roberta Bivins (History/Centre for the History of Medicine) explores how the NHS has always encouraged us to take action to protect our own health, and asks important questions about what kind of NHS we want in the future. Visit the website of the People's History of the NHS to learn more about the project.

In this second of our weekly Faculty of Arts at Home films, Professor Rachel Moseley (Film and Television Studies/Centre for Television History) explores the role that television has played in informing, educating and entertaining us about the domestic arts (cooking, sewing, home decoration, etc.). Rachel looks at the way the lines between public and private space have become blurred during the Covid-19 crisis and how we might make sense of this through television studies.

Dr. Naomi Pullin from the History Department discusses what we might learn from the history of domestic solitude in the early modern home in relation to our current lockdown situation. The story that Naomi tells here, based on the correspondence of Lady Anne Dormer (1648–1695), is one of the importance of keeping in touch with those we love.

The Then & Now project was born in early January 2020. It is a student-led research project that aims to promote a greater sense of learning community amongst the Faculty. As a response to the construction of the new Faculty of Arts building (due in 2021), the project compares what it was like to be an Arts student at Warwick in the past (“then”) and today (“now”), exploring both the history and evolution of the Faculty of Arts and the University of Warwick.

Undergraduate and postgraduate students from across the Arts have worked collaboratively to conduct archival research at the Modern Records Centre and Students’ Union Archive, as well as interviews with current and former staff and students. Originally conceived as a joint physical and digital exhibit, the Covid-19 pandemic pushed us to move all the research to the digital space, which incidentally gave us the opportunity to include far more material than the physical space would have supported

Visit the online exhibition now!