Bolton Branch Programme 2011-12

Bolton

Meetings are held at 7.30pm at the Parish Hall, Silverwell Street, Bolton BL1 1PS. Admission for visitors is free. Branch membership costs £15 p.a. Refreshments are free.

For further details, please contact the branch secretary Jenni Hyde 0161 654 6197 secretary@boltonhistassoc.org.uk 

http://www.boltonhistassoc.org.uk/

Monday 12th September 2011

AGM and Dr Carolyn Routledge (University of Liverpool and Bolton Museum)
‘Exhibiting Bolton Museum's Egyptian Collection'

Following the official business of the AGM, Dr Carolyn Routledge, curator of Egyptology at Bolton Museum and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool, will discuss the planning behind the exhibition of approximately 250 ancient Egyptian objects from Bolton Museum that will tour Taiwan and China beginning in June 2011. For more information about the tour, see
http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/news/boltons-egyptian-objects-tour-far-east

Monday October 3rd 2011

Dr Zheng Yangwen (University of Manchester)

‘The Great Divergence: How China Fell behind Europe'

Born and raised in China, Dr Zheng Yangwen's education has taken her from China to the United States (Oberlin College, BA 1995), from France (Universite de Strasbourg) to King's College, Cambridge (MPhil 1997 and PhD 2001).  She then taught and conducted research at the University of Pennsylvania (2002-04) and the National University of Singapore (2004 - 06) before coming to Manchester University where she is Lecturer in the History of China.

Monday 7th November 2011

Dr Stephen Mossman (University of Manchester)

‘The Spiritual Life of Merchant Bankers'

This will be a talk about the Convent of the Green Isle, a unique foundation of a lay monastery in fourteenth-century Strasbourg by a group of massively wealthy merchant bankers and their associates, which grew into a major centre for religious and literary culture in late medieval and Reformation-era Germany. Dr Mossman says, "I began to work on this before the ‘credit crunch', honest..."
Stephen Mossman is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Manchester, appointed 2009, after three years as a fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He wrote his doctorate in Oxford and Freiburg (in Germany) and studied as an undergraduate at Oxford and at Bonn. His book ‘Marquard von Lindau and the Challenges of Religious Life in Late Medieval Germany' was published by Oxford University Press in 2010, and he has published widely otherwise on the religious and cultural history of late medieval Europe.

Monday 28th November

‘The Great Debate' Bolton Heat

The Great Debate is the Historical Association's national search for a young public speaker. Bolton's heat is one of many that will take place across the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland, where students aged between 16 and 19 will be debating the question: "Why does history matter to you?" Each competitor will be given five minutes to present their case and then field questions from the three judges, and the heats culminate in the final in London in March 2012. Our judges will include Mr David Clayton, President and Chairman of the Bolton Branch, and Dr Glyn Redworth (tbc), Vice-President of the Bolton Branch and Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Manchester.  We hope that you will come along to support and encourage these young public speakers.

Monday 9th January 2012

Dr Jackie Ui Chionna (National University of Ireland, Galway)

‘The Ashworth Family and the Galway Fishery, 1852-1922'

Based in Galway, where she teaches in the History Department of the National University of Ireland, Galway, Dr. Jackie Uí Chionna is a native of Dublin, and a graduate of University College Dublin. She also holds post-graduate qualifications from Trinity College Dublin, and University College Cork. In her lecture "The Galway Fishery under the ownership of the Ashworth Family, 1852 - 1922" Dr. Uí Chionna will draw heavily on the research conducted for her recently completed Ph.D. on the history of the Galway Fishery. At the heart of the story are Edmund and Thomas Ashworth from Egerton, who were brothers, and members of a well-known Quaker cotton milling family in the Bolton area. Their purchase of the Galway Fishery - for £5,000 in 1852 - was to lead to the establishment of the world's first commercial salmon fishery in a small town on the west coast of Ireland, and heralded the beginning of both the science, and the industry, we now know as aquaculture.

Monday 6th February 2012

Prof. Charles Esdaile (University of Liverpool)

‘Bullets, Baggages and Ballads: Forgotten Sources for the Experience of British Women in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815'

Though almost entirely absent from traditional military history, women were intimately connected with warfare in the so-called 'horse-and-musket' period (1650-1850). Thousands of women went to war as soldiers' wives and marched from battle to battle with their menfolk, while a few for one reason or another even dressed themselves as men and fought in the front line. For even larger numbers of other women, meanwhile, contact with soldiers played a major presence in their lives: they fell in love with them, ran away with them and, sadly, very often were betrayed by them. All these Pollies, Nancies and Sallies have left but little trace in the archives, but to this day they remain celebrated in the dozens of folk-songs that form the raw material for this paper.

Charles Esdaile has taught at the Universities of Durham, Southampton and Liverpool, where he has since 2004 had a personal chair in the School of History. The author of numerous works on the Napoleonic period, including, most notably, The Peninsular War: a New History (Penguin Books, 2002) and Napoleon's Wars: an International History (Penguin Books, 2007), he is currently working on a study of the experience of women in the Peninsular War.

Monday 5th March 2012

Prof. Daniel Szechi (University of Manchester)

‘The Battle of Preston'

Professor Szechi taught at universities in the U.K. and the U.S.A. before taking up the post of Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Manchester in August 2006. His research interests centre around Jacobism and the topic of his lecture will be the November 1715 Battle of Preston, during the First Jacobite Rebellion.

Monday 16th April

Dr Bruce Routledge (University of Liverpool)

‘Time, Kings, and the Time of Kings: Debates on Radiocarbon Dating and Biblical Historiography'

Dr. Routledge is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Liverpool and his research focuses on the Bronze and Iron Ages of the Levant, most particularly the Iron Age of south-central Jordan (biblical Moab). In Jordan he directs on-going research projects at the sites of Khirbat al-Mudayna al-‘Aliya and Dhiban. Dr. Routledge also has strong research interests in cultural theories of state-formation.

Monday 14th May

‘Celebrating Local History'

An event to celebrate the Historical Association's Local History Month. Details are yet to be confirmed, but the evening usually consists of a number of short presentations on aspects of local history, often given by members of the branch.