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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Chinese history?
Teaching History feature
Teaching Chinese history in the UK runs up against some immediate obstacles. It lacks the familiar staging posts of European history: Chairman Mao is among the few well-known names, and terms such as Cultural Revolution and Opium War may attract recognition, but are often not understood in detail. The situation...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Chinese history?
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Using metaphor to highlight causal processes with Year 13
Article
Alarmed by his students’ random use of causal language in their essays, James Edward Carroll resolved to help his students improve their understanding of causal processes. Carroll decided to introduce his students to the metaphors that historians use to describe causation in the historiography of the Salem witch trials. By modelling...
Using metaphor to highlight causal processes with Year 13
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Short cuts to deep knowledge
Teaching History article
Sam Pullan explains how a chance encounter has helped him to improve his introduction to the modern themes and founding documents of US politics. Working with a professional historian whom he met, by chance, over dinner, he was able to produce lessons at the cutting edge of subject knowledge to...
Short cuts to deep knowledge
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Learning from a pandemic
Teaching History article
In order to contextualise and make sense of the Covid-19 pandemic, Verity Morgan worked with her school’s long-standing partner school in Ghana to devise an innovative project combining history and science, past and present. In this article, Morgan sets out the rationale for the project, her detailed adaptation of a British Council...
Learning from a pandemic
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Film: “The Talk Should Not Be Broadcast”: Homosexuality and the BBC before 1967
Virtual Branch
In the centenary year of the BBC, this Virtual Branch talk from Marcus Collins relates the strange tale of how the BBC did and did not broadcast about homosexuality in the 1950s and 1960s and what it tells us about sexuality, broadcasting and the origins of permissiveness in mid-twentieth century Britain.
Marcus Collins...
Film: “The Talk Should Not Be Broadcast”: Homosexuality and the BBC before 1967
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Building local history into the curriculum
Teaching History article
Neil Bates and Robert Bowry have chosen to tackle the issue of curriculum coherence by including local history, both as starting point for new students joining the school in Year 7 and as a golden thread running throughout their Key Stage 3 curriculum. In this article they explain the rationale...
Building local history into the curriculum
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Film: A Jewish Divorce Case in Medieval England
Virtual Branch
In 1242, the prominent thirteenth-century Jewish financier David of Oxford attempted to divorce his wife, Muriel. In the process, he met with a number of obstacles which seriously hampered his efforts and had far-reaching implications for the Jewish community as a whole. In the end, David had to appeal directly...
Film: A Jewish Divorce Case in Medieval England
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Virtual Branch recording: Why has Monarchy survived in Europe?
Virtual Branch
In the lead-up to the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, Dr Bob Morris joined the HA Virtual Branch in March 2022 to consider why the monarchy has survived in Europe.
Dr R. M. (Bob) Morris is a Senior Honorary Research Associate at the Constitution Unit, University College London. He was formerly a...
Virtual Branch recording: Why has Monarchy survived in Europe?
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History Abridged: Salt mines in Eastern Europe
Historian feature
History Abridged: This feature seeks to take a person, event or period and abridge, or focus on, an important event or detail that can get lost in the big picture. See all History Abridged articles
Towards the end of the Bronze Age, the climate across Europe began to warm. This...
History Abridged: Salt mines in Eastern Europe
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Film: The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania (1772-1795)
Repercussions for German-Polish Relations and their Legacy.
Karin Friedrich recently joined the Virtual Branch to discuss aspects of its complex history in her talk on the partitions of Poland, their repercussions for German-Polish relations and their legacy. Professor Friedrich is chair in Early Modern European History at the University of Aberdeen, co-director of the Centre for Early Modern...
Film: The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania (1772-1795)
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... expanding the reach of the American Revolution
Teaching History feature
The Founding Fathers of the United States of America are never far from current political and cultural discussions. Whether prompted by the phenomenal success of Hamilton: the musical (2015), or the shocking scenes of riotous attack on the US Capitol in January 2021, the revolutionary intentions and legacy of such...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... expanding the reach of the American Revolution
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Film: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War
The Searchers
Historian Robert Sackville-West joined the HA Virtual Branch in November 2021 to talk about the topic of his book The Searchers: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War. By the end of the First World War, the whereabouts of more than half a million British soldiers were unknown. Most were presumed...
Film: The Quest for the Lost of the First World War
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Teaching Britain’s ‘civil rights’ history
Teaching History article
Hannah Elias and Martin Spafford begin this article by explaining why they believe it is essential for young people to learn about the ‘heterogeneous, rich and complex’ history of the struggle for civil rights in Britain. Drawing on their diverse experiences of researching, writing and teaching history at school and university...
Teaching Britain’s ‘civil rights’ history
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Recorded webinar: History, Politics and Journalism
Teacher and Student Study Session
History, politics and journalism are intertwined. In this webinar (filmed in December 2021) Professor Anna Whitelock and members of her department from City, University of London explore the inter-related history, politics and journalism of Russia and the Cold War. First, Dina Fainberg explores Soviet relations with the world under Nikita...
Recorded webinar: History, Politics and Journalism
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Triumphs Show: Diversifying the curriculum at A-level
Teaching History feature
There is a wealth of literature arguing for the importance of accommodating a wide range of perspectives and experiences in school history curricula. Many have contended that it is crucial to include the stories of those traditionally omitted from historical records in order to teach history well. Others have emphasised...
Triumphs Show: Diversifying the curriculum at A-level
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The British Empire on trial
Article
In the light of present-day concerns about the place, in a modern world, of statues commemorating figures whose roles in history are of debatable merit, Dr Gregory Gifford puts the British Empire on trial, presenting a balanced case both for and against.
In June 2020 when the statue of slave-trader Edward Colston...
The British Empire on trial
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the British Empire and the age of revolutions in the global South
Teaching History feature
The historiography of the British Empire has taken a long course since the era of decolonisation. Political histories of the late twentieth century considered the mechanisms connecting crises at the ‘periphery’ with metropolitan decision-making. One rather overused stereotype was the so-called ‘man on the spot’ pushing empire forward, be they...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the British Empire and the age of revolutions in the global South
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Using the concept of place to help Year 9 students to visualise the complexities of the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Inspired by the work of the social and cultural historian Tim Cole, Stuart Farley decided to look again at the way he teaches the Holocaust. He wanted to focus on the geographical concept of place as a way of enabling his Year 9 students to build far more diverse narratives,...
Using the concept of place to help Year 9 students to visualise the complexities of the Holocaust
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What can rituals reveal about power in the medieval world? Teaching Year 7 pupils to apply interdisciplinary approaches
Teaching History article
Much has been written in recent years about how historical scholarship can be used to shape practice in the classroom. As an historian of the medieval period now working as an history teacher, Dhwani Patel offers a fresh perspective on these debates. During her PGCE year, Patel found herself reflecting...
What can rituals reveal about power in the medieval world? Teaching Year 7 pupils to apply interdisciplinary approaches
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Diversifying the curriculum: one department’s holistic approach
Teaching History article
In this article, Theo Woods shares the experience of one history department as they embarked on a substantial process of curriculum review and development. The department sought to address concerns that the range of history taught in their school, across the full seven years of students’ secondary experience, was too ‘traditional,...
Diversifying the curriculum: one department’s holistic approach
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Film: Life and Death in Occupied France
Silent Village
Robert Pike joined the HA Virtual Branch to discuss the research for his latest book Silent Village: Life and Death in Occupied France. This work explores life in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane before, during and after the infamous massacre and destruction by Nazi Germany that took place on 10 June...
Film: Life and Death in Occupied France
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Planning a more diverse and coherent Year 7 curriculum
Teaching History article
In this article, Jacob Olivey describes his department’s efforts to both diversify their Key Stage 3 curriculum and secure greater curricular coherence. Building on a large body of research and practice, Olivey sought new forms of curricular coherence through the selection and sequencing of substantive content across the curriculum. He...
Planning a more diverse and coherent Year 7 curriculum
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Power, authority and geography
Teaching History article
Dissatisfied by her previous enquiries on medieval kingship and inspired by Helen Castor’s 'She-Wolves', Elizabeth Carr sought to incorporate the stories of powerful medieval women such as Empress Matilda and Eleanor of Aquitaine into her Key Stage 3 curriculum. Carr used these stories to highlight to her pupils the crucial...
Power, authority and geography
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Film: Meet the author: Marc Morris on The Anglo-Saxons
Article
In this Virtual Branch talk best-selling author and renowned historian Marc Morris joined us to discuss the process of researching for, structuring and writing his new book The Anglo-Saxons: a history of the beginnings of England.
Drawing on a vast range of original evidence - chronicles, letters, archaeology and artefacts - Morris's...
Film: Meet the author: Marc Morris on The Anglo-Saxons
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Filmed Lecture: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution
A Fistful of Shells
In this Virtual Branch webinar we were joined in conversation with Dr Toby Green on his acclaimed book 'A Fistful of Shells'. Shortlisted for the 2020 Wolfson Prize and winner of the 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, the book explores West Africa from the Rise of the...
Filmed Lecture: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution
