Departmental news

The Department of History is looking to appoint a Research Fellow for a fixed-term period of 24 months from 1 September 2025 to work with Dr Anna Toropova on the Wellcome Trust funded Career Development Award: ‘Traumatised Minds, Neurosis and Hysteria in Soviet Medicine and Culture, 1917-1953’.

This project examines scientific, medical and cultural approaches to psychological trauma in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1953.

The full advert and job description can be found on the University of Warwick website. For informal queries, please contact Dr Anna Toropova at anna.toropova.1@warwick.ac.uk.

The deadline for applications is Sunday 16 March 2025 at 11.55pm.

Congratulations to Professor Roberta Bivins and Professor Mathew Thomson who have had their article about NHS anniversaries published in Modern British History.

This was drawn from reflections from The Cultural History of the NHS research project.

Read the full article here.

Abstract

Delivered a day after Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) reached its 75th year since its opening on the Appointed Day of 5 July 1948, the Pimlott Lecture for 2023 explored the culture of NHS anniversary-making. What can the marking of these anniversaries tell us about changing attitudes towards the service, and indeed, the British state? Here, examining evidence from the media, government archives, and Mass Observation, we argue that NHS anniversaries have long functioned as points of reflection but that their role as moments of national celebration and even communion has come to the fore only recently and culminated in the apparent ‘anniversary fever’ of 2018. We will explore the reasons behind the growing public fervour, what it can tell us, and the lessons offered by our work on this (still) best-loved of British institutions for historians working on highly politicized objects in ‘fevered’ times.

Congratulations to Dr Jack Bowman, Teaching Fellow in Modern History, who has been given an Honourable Mention in the inaugural Historical Journal Early Career Prize! Jack gives an insight into their article 'The Early Political Thought and Publishing Career of V. K. Krishna Menon, 1928–1938', which was published last year.

Watch here on X.

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.

Read the insite article in full.

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, 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.

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

https://x.com/AHAhistorians/status/1848367144108462091

The department is very sad to learn of the death of Prof. Trevor Burnard.

Many congratulations to graduate Sara Akhavan-Malayeri, the Maxine Berg Prize winner of 2024! Her dissertation entitled "The Fight over the Five ‘Soviet-born Wives of British Subjects’: the Impact of Anglo-Soviet Marriages in Early Cold War Britain” was awarded Best Dissertation in the Field of Global History. Sara was also awarded the Final Year Undergraduate Iain Smith Single-Honours Prize set up by a bequest from Emeritus Reader Iain Smith.

The other 2024 prize winners are:

• Jacob McVaddy - Final Year Undergraduate Felix Dennis Dissertation Prize
• Richard Gregory - Final Year Undergraduate Roger Magraw History Joint-Honours prize
• Jade McFarlane - Final Year Undergraduate Year Abroad Reflective Assignment Prize.

A massive congratulations to the other prize winners and all Warwick History graduates 2024!

Find full details of the History prizes awarded at the end of each year here.

The Department of History at the University of Warwick is pleased to announce that the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme is now open and welcomes expressions of interest. The full outline of the process and further details are available hereLink opens in a new window.