The History Lab

History Lab North West: Postgraduate Workshop Weds 2 June 2010

2010-04-14T13:44:00.000+01:00

We're really pleased to announce that History Lab North West will be holding a one day postgrad workshop on Weds 2 June 2010 at Manchester Metropolitan University. To whet your appetite, here's the provisional programme:

11.00am: Registration

11:20am: Welcome

11.30am Session 1: Female Experiences

Jenny Hillman (University of York) ‘Penitent Magdalenes’: Conversion and the Cabinet in seventeenth-century Paris.

Andrea Livesey (University of Liverpool) 'Sexual Interference by the Antebellum Southern Slave owner as told by Ex-Slaves in the 1930s.'

12:30pm: Lunch (please provide your own lunch)

1:30pm Session 2: Representation

Becky Williams (University of Liverpool) “Saints Alive!” Graffiti and Devotion in late medieval Europe.

Rebecca Conway (University of Manchester)‘Modern England is Rapidly BlackpoolingItself’: J.B. Priestley, Blackpooland Englishness.

Simon Williams (University of Liverpool) The Reception of a Medieval Text: Interpreting the Manuscripts of Liudprandof Cremona’s Antapodosis.

3pm: Coffee

3:30pm Session 3: Policy and Reform

Mark Seddon (University of Sheffield) State-Private Networks and the Origin of British Cold War Policy, 1941-1948.

Nick Foggo (University of Liverpool) Why was social reform in Liverpool so long in the coming?

4:30pm Simon Lambe (HistoryLabChair) The Postgraduate Experience

5pm:End

All welcome! For more information, please contact CarlyDeering or Christina Brindley at historylab.northwest@hotmail.com or join our facebook group.

History Lab North West is a regional affiliate of History Lab, the network for postgraduate and early career historians, and is supported by the Institute of Historical Research.

NEW blog site for the History Lab

2010-03-15T14:14:00.000Z

The History Lab blog has moved - please re-direct your brower to http://the-history-lab.blogspot.com. We're hoping to move this blog into our new one, but for the latest news on History Lab activities go to http://the-history-lab.blogspot.com.

Hope to see you at our new address!

IHR Postgraduate Conference 26-27 June 2008: Turning Points

2008-06-30T12:29:00.005+01:00

The Institute of Historical Research lacks mud, tents and druids and is conveniently located in the centre of London. In spite of these obvious drawbacks, around forty postgraduate historians rejected the charms of Glastonbury and instead made a pilgrimage to Bloomsbury, to attend the History Lab’s annual conference. Attendees did not get to witness the spectacle of Jay-Z or Shakin’ Stevens, although both Jethro Tull and the Levellers were mentioned in papers. Moreover, who needs Neil Diamond when the first talk of the conference was on (Sweet) Caroline England?

The broad conference theme, ‘turning points’, allowed for an interesting mix of approaches, styles and periods, but it also gave coherence to the thirty-odd papers which constituted the main bulk of proceedings. A few people had pulled out at the last minute, but the show must go on. Indeed, in a somewhat surreal twist, I found myself delivering somebody else’s paper on the agricultural revolution just after lunch on the first day. After this, Hermione Gifford (Imperial) spoke on industry, specifically the adoption of tungsten carbide cutting tools in Britain after 1927. Hermione’s presentation, and several others, was enhanced by the well thought-out use of projected images which help to grab and sustain the audience’s attention. Mari Takayanagi (IHR), who also works for the Parliamentary Archives, illustrated her talk on the Life Peerages Act of 1958, which included women peers for the first time, with images of the key figures and documents. Her co-panellist, Lucy Hewitt (Edinburgh) projected a number of old maps of London to demonstrate some of the ‘Work of the London Society and the Emergence of Professional Planning’. As these examples show, the participants’ research interests cover an enormous range: earlier on we’d heard Liza Filby (Warwick) discussing Thatcher, sex and morality, alongside Tom Packer (Oxford) who delved into Jesse Helms’ campaign tactics. In a panel charged with contemporary resonance, Campbell Wilson (Glasgow) looked at the oil crisis of 1973 and the discovery of 'energy' while Michael Passmore (IHR) covered the introduction of 'right to buy' for council tenants. Alongside this mass of twentieth century material, the opening panel – on change and continuity in seventeenth century England – gave us a glimpse into what my mum would call ‘real’ history. I found it especially interesting that so much thought-provoking work on this tumultuous period in English history is being carried out by students in American universities!

History Lab events are generally friendly and sociable, and the conference was no exception. The atmosphere was refreshingly laid-back and non-threatening, feedback was constructive, and Tom Packer was indefatigable (he was attending two conferences simultaneously) and I think he just managed to edge Noah Millstone (Stanford) for number of interesting and incisive questions asked. The value of these events is not just about giving a paper, but about meeting people in the same boat, to share good and bad experiences. A lot of the American students who attended are working in Britain, so hopefully some of the contacts they’ve made will prove useful.

Over the lunch break, the History Lab AGM was held and Helen McCarthy (IHR) and Liza outlined the many successful events held during 2007-2008. The newly-elected members of the committee will be under a lot of pressure to maintain the high standards set, but it is undoubtedly a good thing that the History Lab exists. Perhaps one of the reasons I’m taking so long to finish my PhD is so that I can still participate in its activities...

Some people had written their papers months in advance, some had been writing them in the days and nights before the conference. For those of us in the latter group, artificial stimulation was definitely required as the day went on: the tightly-packed schedule was undoubtedly interesting, but hard on tired brains. Luckily, the organisers provided an abundant supply of coffee and, at the end of the first day, wine. The wine reception followed a plenary session on ‘Time and the Shape of History’, led by Professor Penelope Corfield (Royal Holloway) and Dr William Gallois (Roehampton). While a conversation on the nature of time after eight solid hours of panel discussion was perhaps a little beyond some of us, the speakers gave enjoyable and thought-provoking talks and reminded us that we are a lucky generation of scholars, no longer shackled by post-modernism.

The conference dinner, held at a nearby Zizzi, involved more free wine. I had apparently forgotten that I still had a paper to give the next day, and had a few glasses to wind down (perhaps reflecting the fact I had delivered an ‘extra’ paper, I also had two dinners). Dinner was also a good chance to find out about people beyond their research interests (I’ve always been a fan of the idea that you should know your historians before you read their work) and also for me to force the grim details of my own farm-based lifestyle upon unsuspecting people. After dinner, some of us headed to a nearby pub (the evening was beginning to take on a somewhat inevitable character in the context of history-based events). In the pub, the discussion, as ever, revolved around music and, fuelled by alpine lager, some singing was heard. When we were kicked out at closing time, some delegates headed home while the more ‘carefree’ among us headed off to the bowels of nearby Soho where we found a ska club and stayed out til three in the morning. At this point, I recalled I had to give a paper in eight hours time.

Unfortunately, the logistical arrangements of getting some (by now) pointless sleep and printing out my paper meant that I missed the first panel of the second day. This was on ‘Debating Medieval Turning Points’ and, by all accounts, went down very well. However, I had arrived in time for much-needed coffee and then the panel on ‘War, armaments and the quest for peace: transformations in interwar Britain’, which I was speaking on. This had been planned as early as January, as I have great respect for the work of my two co-panellists and wanted the chance to present alongside them. Helen McCarthy spoke on the impact of the League of Nations Union and raised various important points about the Union’s significance (or otherwise), in a talk full of amusing quotations and illustrations. Waqar Zaidi (Imperial) dealt with the impact of technology on international relations and interwar liberal internationalism. I am enormously impressed by his ability to carve out a unique, coherent and interesting thesis from a rather intimidating range of materials, and the relationship between technology and internationalism is fascinating. By comparison to these two my own work is very basic, so I was pleased to get through my paper and avoid any tricky questions. I was a bit scared because Waqar’s supervisor, who writes on the British military-industrial complex, turned up just beforehand. Luckily, he didn’t tear me apart in public, but made some comments to me afterwards. Phew.

After lunch, we had a brilliant (in all senses) talk on the changing perceptions of colour in the age of aniline dyes by Charlotte Nicklas (Brighton) which, again, was lavishly illustrated. Dan Wilson (Birkbeck) then presented a fascinating cameo study on Raymond Williams and the ‘interregnum’, 1880-1914. A large number of empire historians could not make it, so Philipp Wirtz (SOAS) bravely took the stage alone. His account of German observers of the Young Turk movement was well-told and well-received. Indeed, many of the papers on the second day dealt with impressions of the ‘foreigner’ – on the next panel, Chris Knowles (IHR) talked about the reactions of British army officers in Germany during the transition from war to peace in 1945 and Ulrike Thieme (Glasgow) covered the Northern Department of the Foreign Office, its impressions of the post-1945 Soviet political structure (and politicians), and its persuasion of the government to get tough with the Soviet Union. After this panel, I had to leave, and was disappointed to miss the final session on periodisation and narrativity in history-writing. I imagine this would have brought together many of the diverse themes of the conference together and raised more theoretical questions about how we go about our discipline. After all, there aren’t just turning points in the historical narrative, but also huge shifts in the way we go about looking at them.

If you are postgraduate student in the UK next summer, you should definitely consider presenting your work at the 2009 conference. If you don’t fancy that, you should nonetheless attend. It’s an ideal place to give a first paper, to network, to simply meet new people and gain motivation (and to discover previously unknown nightclubs in Soho). My own flagging spirits have certainly been revived, though I should possibly be working on a chapter rather than writing this report... It just remains to thank the History Lab team for organising this, to all the chairs of the various panels and to everybody who turned up and made this such a diverse and entertaining couple of days. And it only cost a tenth of a Glastonbury ticket!

Ed Packard (LSE)

Reflections on teaching wanted

2007-01-10T12:30:00.000Z

The History Lab is in the process of developing its resources for postgraduates and new lecturers on teaching history. We are looking for short articles with people's personal reflections on teaching history in higher education, which could include:

Advice on preparing to teach for the first time
Tips on preparing for seminars, lectures, tutorials
Thoughts on marking and assessment
Thoughts on teaching ancient/medieval/early modern/modern history, on teaching histories of particular states or continents, teaching themes, interdisciplinary teaching... etc etc etc
Using technologies in teaching
Ideas on teaching sessions and strategies
Thoughts on the training you receive from your institution, and what you'd like to receive
Working in different HE environments - not just within the UK but perhaps how it differs from your experience of studying in another country
Working with students from traditional and non-traditional backgrounds
Survival strategies
What you would do differently if you had a second chance to do it again
Developing your skills
Moving on from being a teaching assistant

We are interested in articles from people at all stages in their teaching, from those in their early stages to those who are in their first full-time lecturing position. If you no longer work in HE, but have thoughts about how your experience of teaching during your PhD provided you with transferrable skills, that would be good.

Our initial aim is to compile a mini-archive of these articles before selecting extracts for inclusion in a forthcoming publication. Articles may also be published in their entirety in other formats, possibly through the History Lab website. In all cases, we will consult you fully. We will attribute all usage of this articles, although we are happy to anonymise your work if you prefer.

Articles may be of any length. The deadline for these articles is 1 February 2007 - for more information or to submit copy, please email me at katharine.bradley@sas.ac.uk.

In 2006 I have been mainly reading...

2006-12-09T15:19:00.000Z

It's that time of year again, when pseuds and poseurs (sorry, I mean, public intellectuals, of course) the length and breadth of the country are invited by broadsheet and highbrow weekly to name their books of the year. History always gets a good look-in, although I remain sceptical about food critics who claim to have read 1500-page histories of European culture since 1800... Still, I must admit that I am a bit of a skimmer and dipper when it comes to reading non-fiction, so when I tell you that my books of the year are Vic Gatrell's City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London and David Cannadine's Mellon: An American Life, please don't quiz me on what happens on page 325 or chapter 12. I declare an interest in both cases - I was in Vic's special subject class as an undergrad at Cambridge while he was writing City, and David C is my current boss - but even allowing for ingrained loyalty it's hard not to be impressed by the dazzling combination of scholarship and literary colour that both authors pull off so brilliantly. My other picks of 2006 if you're interested (and I can't imagine why you would be) include Peter Mandler's The English National Character, and Boyd Hilton's A Mad Bad and Dangerous People, and titles on my all-too-long 'to-read' list include Adam Tooze's The Wages of Destruction, Peter Hennessy's Having It So Good and Paul Kennedy's Parliament of Man. I won't say any more in case you think me a pseud or poseur, but I'd be interested to know what fellow Labbers have been reading and enjoying this year...

Summer is on the way

2006-12-07T15:32:00.000Z

Quick Post to remind y'all that the deadline for the History Lab's 2007 Summer Conference is fast approaching (well, you have until 12th January, and given that we are almost into Christmas silly season, I thought it wise to mention this now). It will be held at the IHR in London, the theme is 'Generations', and the call for papers can be accessed here:
http://www.history.ac.uk/histlab/confs.html
The 2006 conference was great fun as I'm sure all attendees will attest (well I had fun anyway), and there was a fantastic selection of papers and speakers from far and wide. We're keen to get every bit as stellar a line-up for next year, and just to whet your appetite even more, we are pleased to announce that Professor Caroline Barron of Royal Holloway will be giving the plenary lecture. Treat.

Bod Almighty

2006-12-06T20:54:00.000Z

Given that the general trend on this blog appears to be towards archive anecdotes, I thought I'd put in my two penneth and regale you with stories of my brush with the Great Bod this week. I'm talking, of course, about the Bodleian, library extraordinaire at the venerable University of Oxford, and harbourer of the personal papers of Gilbert Murray, classicist, internationalist, and leading light of the League of Nations Union and hence of my humble doctorate on the subject of said Union.

Getting hold of a reader's ticket is no walk in the park, I tell you. It requires a 'recommender' to sign a form TWICE vouching for your sound character and genuine need. When you arrive you are required to go to the Admissions Office, housed in the rather splendid Clarendon Building, where you are then invited to read aloud the Bodleian declaration. This involves pledging not to 'kindle a flame' within the precincts of the Bod or to do anything else equally unbecoming (despite, or perhaps because of, the antiquated language I rather suspect this Declaration to be a classic example of the 'invention of tradition' - it was probably introduced in something like 1988 to impress overseas students...). With my sleek new card firmly in my paw, I then strode across the road to the New Bod, which houses the Modern Reading room, home of the Murray papers, or, more precisely, the Murray microfilms (has less of a ring to it, don't you think?)

Now let me say at once - the staff of the Modern Reading room are absolutely delightful and enormously helpful, but, dare I say it, somewhat resigned to the institutional inertia of the place. 'You will probably find the Bodleian a slightly curious institution,' one of the archivists warned me, 'and not terribly user-friendly.' This was said with an air of finality as if user-unfriendliness was somehow an inherent property of the Bodelian system, unchangeable in the way that my hair is brown and eyes are green. This is why I was condemned to winding long reels of microfilm forward and back manually using a reader which must have dated back to the days of Gilbert Murray himself, if not Gladstone. This was also why I was told that if I wished to copy anything, this was possible but only after the tortuous process of arranging for the films to be transferred to another room on the first floor - the guy's facial expression as he imparted this information strongly indicated that attempting this feat would not be wise if I wished to leave with my sanity in tact. So I left that mountain to climb another day and headed off with an Oxford-located old pal to the Turf Tavern for fishcakes and ale - highly user-friendly and no declaration required. Now, the Women's Library next...

Why I Love JSTOR

2006-12-01T15:35:00.000Z

Ok, so the website design is somewhat uninspired, it doesn't cover every major history journal, it's next to useless on very recently published stuff, and sometimes downloading Pdfs makes my poor overworked computer crash, but c'mon, this is mere carping at what has to be one of the most bloody brilliant electronic resources for historians on the internet today. For instance, I found an obscure reference to a piece on the League of Nations Union's educational work in schools in a journal called The History Teacher from 1972. Hey presto! JSTOR had it. It's also great for tracking down random book reviews and finding special issues and supplements on topics of interest. It is a veritable knowledge commons, although I'd be interested to know more about the business model behind it - I am habitually enraged at (what I see as) the meanness of academic journal publishers in limiting access to their online fare, disbelieving as I am that it would make any perceptible difference to what must surely must be loss-leaders anyway to allow postgraduates (or, heck, anyone) to download the full-text. The more that goes into JSTOR the brighter the future looks. I say JSTOR for all, regardless of ability to pay and free at the point of access! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Ingenta!

Take the wikipedia challenge

2006-08-12T23:19:00.000+01:00

For those of you that may not spend as much time on the internet as me, the word wiki may be confusing and slightly frightening to you. The fact is that www.wikipedia.org is quickly becoming a useful source of information online, with over 1.3 million articles in English since it started in 2001.

What makes wikipedia different from a regular encyclopaedia is that any reader that creates an account (a 5 second process) can edit and even rewrite entire entries. Information has the potential to constantly be amended and verified by practically anyone. Changes made are all logged and can be viewed by all. This is about as close as one can get to accountability on the internet.

Of course there are downsides to this and an article dealing in a controversial topic is bound to become a battleground between partisan and very likely irresponsible editing. But in a world where getting at the truth is problematic anyway, it seems like a rather lateral move to me.

But what can wikipedia be a source of for the historian besides diversion? (and there is plenty of that, just click the ‘random button’ to see what I mean). Well certainly each of us in the lab has something that can be added. Even if we would not usually count on the internet as a steadfast source, there are perhaps millions who do. So take the wikipedia challenge:

Look up an article on your current research or something related. It can even be a topic you know well.
See if there is anything you can add, sure it’s not as glamorous as the typical fast-paced lifestyle of the historian, but you will be adding to public discourse, and if the public discourse needs anything, it’s a few more educated people speaking up.

Or you can just go look up goofy nonsense and pop-culture, there’s that too.

SC

Uk Postgraduates Message board

2006-08-10T01:03:00.000+01:00

Even though one of the functions of the History Lab is to offer support for one another, I thought it wouldn't hurt to post a link to this new message board that was just send to me by my department:

http://forum.npc.org.uk/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi

SInce we don't really have our own message board, this is the next best thing, though I imagine there are plenty out there just for history students. I may look those up later.

Also planning to update again soon, this blog needs a bit of a quickstart.

SC

History Lab

2006-06-21T09:57:00.000+01:00

History Lab

Summer in the Gardens...

The History Lab Summer Garden Party was held on Monday 19 June 2006. As per usual, having decided to plan an outdoor event on the basis that the weather might be pleasant enough, Monday was overcast, windy and a bit nippy. It was no surprise, then, that plans to hold the party in the Malet Street sunken gardens were aborted in favour of the IHR common room. Despite this, a great time was had by all, and the Pimms was thoroughly enjoyed...

Didn't make it? Recreate the experience in your own home... Kate's Pimms recipe

Ingredients:
1 x 1L bottle of Pimms
2x 2L bottles of lemonade
1x punnet of strawberries (chopped)
1x cucumber (ideally you should slice this properly, unless your name is Kate, in which case there are rogue clumps of cucumber floating in the drink)
2x packets of fresh mint (rip leaves off the stems)
2x green apples, cubed
2x oranges, thinly sliced
2x lemons, thinly sliced

Serves: rather a lot of people

Method: First of all, get Liza to dispatch John to collect all these ingredients. Get the biggest tupperware box known to mankind, and install yourself in the first floor kitchen. When you have all the fruit, begin washing it whilst convenors from another seminar decide to join you in this v. small kitchen to collect various items they have stashed all over the place, usually next to wherever you are standing. Chop/slice all the fruit with a bread knife kindly borrowed by Liza from the common room (this will account for your idiosyncratic cucumber chopping), throw into tupperware. Add the entire bottle of Pimms. Add half of one of the bottles of lemonade, stirring so that it doesn't fizz all over the place. Add the remainder in the same fashion, and half the bottle of the second (reserve the remainder for later). If you have ice, add it now... Plonk the now heavy tupperware on a trolley, and transport it down to the IHR common room. Drink....

The Project

2006-06-21T09:03:00.000+01:00

One of the more useful pieces of advice I've received since starting out as a doctoral student was to treat the PhD as a project like any other, to be managed effectively through careful planning and goal-setting, through monitoring and reviewing progress at frequent intervals, and through focusing on one's wider community of 'stakeholders' (supervisor, examiners, archivists, peers etc). Now, if this is all sounding a bit too McKinseyite for your liking, then I sympathise. PhDs, after all, are a creative, dynamic and open-ended process - you never know where the content of your archives will take you. I'm also pretty sure that if you referred to your final examiners as 'clients' they'd fail you on principle. Nonetheless, as someone who did a fair amount of project management in a previous life, I've found that some of the skills I picked up have been extremely useful - for example, building and updating bibliographies, planning archive visits (more variables involved that you might expect), and, of course simple time management (if you're full-time, you have three years of empty space to fill...). The School of Advanced Study (where the IHR and hence the History Lab is based) is quite good at providing training in these skills, but I'm curious to know what other institutions offer. Any thoughts on managing PhDs as projects?

Summer in the Archive

2006-06-19T08:05:00.000+01:00

The sun is shining, the World Cup has begun, Wimbledon starts next week and all the women's glossies have published their bikini diet special issue - yes, Summer must be here. For postgraduate historians, however, these months usually carry rather different associations. Free of teaching commitments, seminars and other bits and bobs tying us to the classroom or office, we use this time to descend upon archives and records offices the country over. I have trips planned over the next two months to such delightful places as Winchester, Warwick, Durham, Bristol, Manchester and Bury St Edmunds. Details of this packed schedule often come as a surprise to some of my non-PhD friends, who assume that doctoral students, like undergraduates, have the summer off to go travelling or interning in intrepid places. When I patiently explain that no, being a PhD student does not equate to being a layabout (although sometimes it can), they look at me as if this is were an entirely new idea. Do any other history labbers have the same problem?

Colindale

2006-06-16T08:18:00.000+01:00

Oh, the miseries of the Northern Line! As I write this, I am mentally preparing for yet another painful tube experience as I and those other poor souls who need to use the Northern line beyond Hampstead limp our way along the unloved tracks. My destination, of course, is Colindale, a place to which many postgraduates must make a pilgrimage during their doctoral years, sipping the insipid machine coffee, shivering in the over-zealous air-con, and hoping no-one will notice the tiny tearing sounds every time they turn a newspaper page (whoops!). Ah yes, what joy it is. Trouble is, though, that at least for my work (interwar British political culture), local newspapers are a totally fabulous source, and there really is no choice but to endure to privations of zone three. Digitisation of the Times is great, and roll on the Guardian, Telegraph, Daily Mail etc. But who, seriously is going to want to digitise the Leicester Mercury? Or the Brighton Gazette? Or the Middlesex County Standard? For these, I fear, it will be Colindale for many years to come...

Postgraduate Conferences

2006-06-15T14:20:00.000+01:00

The History Lab is currently scratching its collective head over the theme for next year's summer conference (for details of this year's - taking place next month, check out http://www.history.ac.uk/histlab). We have a few ideas, but it's kind of sent me back to first principles. What, after all, should the purpose of a postgraduate conference be? Is it simply a chance for students to get a taste of presenting their work in a friendly, non-intimidating environment - and therefore the theme isn't really that important, as long as it is broad-ranging and inclusive? OR, should we aim higher, for a conference which will facilitate discussion and produce some answers to key intellecutal questions facing the profession - such as the strengths and weaknesses of interdisciplinarity, and of comparative history, the impact of the 'cultural turn', the extent to which historians can and should bring their knowledge to bear on present-day problems - and so on? IS there any point bringing together students working on radically different periods and parts of the world unless these sorts of questions can be posed as a way of providing coherence? AND more practically, what are the secrets to a good postgrad conference experience? Nice sandwiches? An inspirational plenary speech from an established name? Plenty of down time for networking and informal discusson? Tell us your thoughts...

Welcome to the Lab

2006-06-15T14:17:00.000+01:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Blog of the History Lab, the UK's premier networking forum for postgraduate and early-career historians, based at the Institute of Historical Research in London. If you want to find out more about our activities or join our email list, check out our webpage at http://www.history.ac.uk/histlab