All enquiries to Hon Secretary Eleanor Yates – email historicalassocwinchester@outlook.com or text or call 07973 427915

Lectures will be held in the Winchester College Science Lecture Theatre, Science School, Kingsgate Road, Winchester, SO23 9PG at 7.30pm. There is parking behind the science school and disabled access to the Theatre. Please ask if you would like directions.

Lectures are free to members of the Historical Association, of the Winchester Branch (which costs £10pa or £15pa for 2 members at the same address) and students & teachers at affiliated (ask the Secretary) schools & colleges, but we ask adult visitors for a donation of £5.00.

Branch membership is due in September.  Bank details will be circulated then.

 

 

Winchester Programme 2026-27

 

 

Wednesday 7 October 2026: 

'Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Age of Revolution: An International History of Anti-Slavery, c. 1787-1820.

Professor John Oldfield (University of Hull): 

This would encompass not just the British movement but also initiatives in France and the United States.'

 

Wednesday 11 November 2026: 

'Ties of affection and service on the Grand Tour: Domestic labour in the household accounts of Thomas Jones (1743-1803)' 

Professor Melissa Calaresu  (Gonville & Caius):

Professor Calaresu says: I am a cultural historian who originally trained as a historian of political thought for my PhD in Cambridge, after undergraduate and Master's degrees in Canada. My work moves between my interests in material culture and the urban environment with the history of ideas in early modern Italy. I am currently writing a cultural history of the urban experience of the Welsh landscape artist Thomas Jones (1742-1803) in Rome and Naples in the 1780s.]

 

Wednesday 2nd December 2026:

Witchcraft and politics in seventeenth century English media

Dr Tabitha Stanmore, University of Exeter

What did it mean to call someone a witch in the 1600s?  The fear of malevolent witchcraft was very real in early modern England, but the label was also a useful one to employ against political enemies, or reinforce the status quo.  During this talk, Dr Tabitha Stanmore will explore some of the ways that witchcraft was weaponised for political ends.  Focussing mostly on the years leading up to and including the Civil Wars, we will look at how witchcraft propaganda was used to disparage certain groups, but also hold up a mirror to English society.

This talk stems from Dr Stanmore's current research into the 1640s witch hunt and its impact on the Fenland region of East Anglia.  She is under contract with The Bodley Head to write The Devil in the Fens: A Tale of Sorcery and Resistance, and she has previously written Cunning Folk: Life in the era of practical magic and Love Spells and Lost Treasure: Service magic in England from the Middle Ages to the early modern era.

 

Wednesday 13th January 2027:

The Imperial Aesthetic: British Photography and the Indian Peoples in the post-Mutiny era

Dr Xavier Guégan, Senior Lecturer in Colonial and Postcolonial History, University of Winchester, and Branch Chairman

Dr Guégan researches, publishes and lectures on South Asian history under British colonial rule and North African history under French colonial rule, including imperial culture and ideologies, as well as on violence and anti-colonial resistance, and the correlation between photography and history.  His books include The British Abroad since the Eighteenth Century (co-edited) and most recently The Imperial Aesthetic: Photography, Samuel Bourne and the Indian Peoples in the post-Mutiny era (Brill, 2026).

 

Wednesday 10th February 2027:

“927: the ‘Making of England’?”

Professor Ryan Lavelle, Professor in Early Medieval History, University of Winchester

Professor Lavelle's  research focuses on Anglo-Saxon political and military history, particularly in Wessex.  His books on Anglo-Saxon England include Alfred’s Wars, Danes in Wessex (co-edited), Cnut: The North Sea King, Places of Contested Power (2020) and Early Medieval Winchester Communities, Authority and Power in an Urban Space, C. 800C. 1200 (co-edited).  This lecture has been arranged to mark the 1100th anniversary of Æthelstan's conquest of the Viking kingdom of York in 972.

 

Wednesday 10th March 2027:

"Anna of Denmark: Royal Consort, Politics and Patronage"

Professor Susan Doran, Professor of Early Modern British History, University of Oxford

Until recently Professor Doran's research focused on the Tudors, especially the reign of Elizabeth I.  After completing Elizabeth I and her Circle, she worked on the accession and first decade of James VI and I’s reign as King of Great Britain and produced From Tudors to Stuarts, a book exploring the continuities and changes brought about in personnel, politics, culture, and policies from 1603 to 1612.  In all her research, she takes an interdisciplinary approach and examines a wide range of political, literary, and visual sources.

 

The summer lecture in late May is still to be finalised.  We will follow this lecture with light refreshments in a Garden or room in Winchester College.