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Mudlarking in the Thames: evidence, ecology and enquiry
Teaching History article
Maryam Dorudi arrived at her second PGCE placement school to find many pupils receiving free school meals and speaking English as an additional language. Wanting her students to identify as Londoners and historians, she was drawn into the world of mudlarking and Lara Maiklem. Over the course of eight lessons, she...
Mudlarking in the Thames: evidence, ecology and enquiry
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Britain’s forgotten colony? Why Hong Kong deserves a place in the story of empire
Teaching History article
Ollie Barnes encountered Hong Kong history on honeymoon and, powerfully, in the classroom in Nottinghamshire. Historical changes in the former colony’s present had resulted in increasing numbers of Hong Kongers arriving in school. This history demanded attention – important historical changes were in process and pupils needed to understand them....
Britain’s forgotten colony? Why Hong Kong deserves a place in the story of empire
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Teaching Years 8 and 9 to write analytically about similarity and difference
Teaching History article
Reflecting on the quality of her pupils’ analyses of past diversity and complexity, Molly-Ann Navey was struck by the contrast with their writing geared to other types of disciplinary problem. Navey therefore set out to develop entirely new sequences of lessons which would teach pupils to shape arguments about similarity...
Teaching Years 8 and 9 to write analytically about similarity and difference
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Anti-alienism in Britain c.1880–1925
Teaching History feature
The Aliens Acts, passed between 1905 and 1925, marked a significant development in the history of controls on migrants in Britain. Analysing this legislation and the social realities of how it affected migrant communities allows students and educators to reveal insights into histories of migration.
It has been suggested that...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Anti-alienism in Britain c.1880–1925
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Cunning Plan 196: Does women’s suffrage deserve a more prominent place in Australia’s national narrative?
Teaching History feature
In this Cunning Plan, Jonathon Dallimore and Martin Douglas explore how teaching about the history of the suffrage movement in Australia can be used to raise questions both about the campaign for votes for women in Australia and wider questions about what defines Australian history. They also open up the...
Cunning Plan 196: Does women’s suffrage deserve a more prominent place in Australia’s national narrative?
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‘What do they mean by that?’ Helping students to analyse academic writing from Key Stage 3 onwards
Teaching History article
Following her PGCE year, Alex Blelloch became concerned about the ways in which some of the students she observed struggled to engage with the complexities of texts written by historians. More broadly, she was also concerned about the limited opportunities younger students had to engage with historians’ works. In this...
‘What do they mean by that?’ Helping students to analyse academic writing from Key Stage 3 onwards
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Move Me On 196: incorporating historical artefacts into worthwhile historical enquiries
Teaching History feature
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...
Move Me On 196: incorporating historical artefacts into worthwhile historical enquiries
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Teaching History 196: Demanding History
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
03 Editorial (Read article - open access)
04 HA Secondary News
06 HA Update
08 Mudlarking in the Thames: evidence, ecology and enquiry – Maryam Dorudi (Read article)
19 Britain’s forgotten colony? Why Hong Kong deserves a place in the story of empire – Ollie Barnes (Read article)
32 Triumphs Show: Year 9...
Teaching History 196: Demanding History
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Environmental history and the challenges of the present
Historian article
In a wide-ranging survey of the field, Amanda Power explains what it means to do environmental history at a time of climate crisis, and points to the opportunities and challenges in this thriving area of research...
Environmental history and the challenges of the present
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Glacier Tours in the Northern Playground
Historian article
Glaciers are on the frontier of the climate crisis. Their ongoing disappearance is one of its most visible effects. In this article, Christian Drury explores how tourists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries viewed and understood glaciers, and what they contributed to the history of environmental thought...
Glacier Tours in the Northern Playground
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Sensory streetscapes: people and urban environments 1930–1975
Historian article
Urbanisation is a defining characteristic of the modern age in Britain. The physical construction and management of urban environments has consumed the attention of historians since the late 1960s. In this article, Lucy Faire and Denise McHugh turn their attention to the citizens’ sensory experience of the modern town and...
Sensory streetscapes: people and urban environments 1930–1975
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Doing history for climate action
Historian article
Incidents of flooding across the UK are increasing, threatening homes and livelihoods. In this article, Hannah Worthen and Briony McDonagh explain how they are using historic records of floods and flood management to engage communities in Hull in new conversations and to prompt vital action. Their project, Risky Cities, was...
Doing history for climate action
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Father of the Free French Navy: Thierry d’Argenlieu
Historian article
Thierry d’Argenlieu played a crucial role in the French Resistance during World War Two, but he does not fit the mould of the typical resister. Adrian Smith brings to light d’Argenlieu’s wartime experiences, and follows his career after 1945 as High Commissioner in Indo-China and member of the Carmelite order...
Father of the Free French Navy: Thierry d’Argenlieu
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The Chinese National Anthem
Historian article
The history of the Chinese national anthem gives Derek Ying a new perspective on society and culture from the era of the Qing dynasty to the People’s Republic of China. It reveals the strengths and weaknesses of different regimes, and the power of song to unite and divide...
The Chinese National Anthem
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American Vikings past and present: untangling myth from reality
Historian article
There is now compelling evidence that Norse people – popularly known as Vikings – had some interaction with the First Peoples of North America. Martyn Whittock looks at how the appeal of a Viking legend has combined with archaeological discoveries to create a powerful attachment in the North American imagination...
American Vikings past and present: untangling myth from reality
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In conversation with Mark Nicholls
Historian feature
The Historian sat down with Mark Nicholls to discuss his latest book, The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History, co-authored with Allen Boyer, which charts the history of the law of treason from its origins to the present day...
In conversation with Mark Nicholls
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Real Lives: Henry Allingham and the First World War
Historian feature
Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected to greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...
Real Lives: Henry Allingham and the First World War
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My Favourite History Place: Bad Godesberg Tower
Historian feature
Bad Godesberg tower is the most intact remnant of what was once a castle. Built in 1210 by the Archbishop of Cologne, Dietrich von Moers (circa 1385–1463), Godesberg Castle enjoyed a relatively quiet existence as an archiepiscopal seat. Then, on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses against...
My Favourite History Place: Bad Godesberg Tower
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The Historian 162: Out now
The magazine of the Historical Association
Read The Historian 162: Environment
Environment, broadly defined as the surroundings in which one lives, is an essential component of the study of past societies. Its importance has given rise to a number of fields of study. In Britain, landscape history was pioneered by W.G. Hoskins in the 1950s, and...
The Historian 162: Out now
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The Historian 162: Environment
The magazine of the Historical Association
This edition of The Historian is open-access to all (including all linked articles). For a subscription to The Historian (published quarterly), plus access to our library of high-quality podcasts and films, free short courses and Virtual Branch talks, membership of a thriving community of history-lovers and much more, join the HA today.
4 Letters
5 Editorial (Read...
The Historian 162: Environment
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Primary History summer resource 2024: the Ancient Greeks
Primary member resource
Our free summer resource for 2024 is intended to enhance your subject knowledge about Ancient Greece.
The first article looks at an individual Greek, Pytheas. Often Greece is taught largely as an insular place of city states, but the reality is that Greece was heavily involved in trade and they...
Primary History summer resource 2024: the Ancient Greeks
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Lengthening Year 9’s narrative of the American civil rights movement
Teaching History article
Inspired by reading the work of Stephen Tuck, Ellie Osborne set out to design a new sequence of lessons that would help her students adopt a longer lens on the American civil rights movement. At the same time, Osborne wanted to put more emphasis on the agency and campaigns of activists,...
Lengthening Year 9’s narrative of the American civil rights movement
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How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
Teaching History article
While history teachers (and examiners) regularly invite students to consider what cartoons or paintings reveal about contemporary attitudes to particular social or political developments, such sources are often difficult to interpret and to use appropriately. Drawing on a wealth of detailed research and a passion to support teachers and students with...
How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
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Cunning Plan... for studying medieval Ghana and Aksum
Teaching History feature
This Cunning Plan details an enquiry that I developed in order to achieve two curricular goals: to diversify our historical content and to help students to improve their disciplinary thinking and writing about similarity and difference. The enquiry addresses medieval Africa, specifically the East African kingdom of Aksum (approximately 300...
Cunning Plan... for studying medieval Ghana and Aksum
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... immigration in French history
Historian feature
3 July 2024 marks the 50th anniversary of a significant, yet little known, event in French history: the declaration of an end to the recruitment of economic migrants. Over the previous decades, some three million migrant workers had arrived to surprisingly little fanfare, building the economic growth later mythologized by...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... immigration in French history
