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Virtual Branch Recording: Magna Carta
Article
This month at the Virtual Branch, renowned medieval historian David Carpenter will delve into the enduring legacy of Magna Carta. Drawing on his recent work uncovering and authenticating a Magna Carta document in the United States, Carpenter will explore why both the dating and the content of this foundational charter...
Virtual Branch Recording: Magna Carta
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Recorded webinar: Natural disasters in medieval Britain
Article
Natural disasters frequently affected medieval populations. This webinar explores some examples of what happened when meteorological hazards struck medieval communities, how they reacted and what steps they took to protect themselves against future risks. Through archaeological and historical sources of evidence, Peter Brown explores the diverse impacts unleashed by disasters...
Recorded webinar: Natural disasters in medieval Britain
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Recorded webinar: Indian Suffragettes: women's activism in South Asia and beyond
Article
Between 1917 and 1947, women in the Indian subcontinent were engaged in active debates and noteworthy demonstrations for the vote, building up a national suffrage movement. In this talk Professor Sumita Mukherjee discusses the activities of Indian suffragettes in this period, showing how they were connected with British and other...
Recorded webinar: Indian Suffragettes: women's activism in South Asia and beyond
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Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2025 - Dr Christine Counsell
Dr Christine Counsell
The Historical Association's Medlicott Medal 2025 was awarded to Dr Christine Counsell. The award seeks to recognise individuals from a diversity of backgrounds in their service to history. Read more about Christine, her work and her award here.
As is the custom, Dr Christine Counsell received her award and presented her...
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2025 - Dr Christine Counsell
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Virtual Branch: Birds and British History
Article
In his recent book The Cuckoo's Lea Michael J Warren provides a exploration of how birds are entwined with British history, particularly in our place names.
Join us for an exclusive Q&A with the author to weave together literature, history and ornithology and discover a fascinating heritage that matters deeply now when so...
Virtual Branch: Birds and British History
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Virtual Branch Recording: Locating and Mapping the Jews of Medieval Lincoln
Article
As part of a project to identify and write biographies of all of the Jews of the medieval Lincoln Jewry, Natasha Jenman, Luka Liu, and Josh Outhwaite have been working on records of Jewish property ownership in the city across the thirteenth century. This allows them to identify those individuals who will be...
Virtual Branch Recording: Locating and Mapping the Jews of Medieval Lincoln
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Virtual Branch Recording: The Fall of the English Republic
Article
Oliver Cromwell’s death in 1658 sparked a period of unrivalled turmoil and confusion in English history. In less than two years, there were close to ten changes of government; rival armies of Englishmen faced each other across the Scottish border; and the Long Parliament was finally dissolved after two decades.
Why...
Virtual Branch Recording: The Fall of the English Republic
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Virtual Branch Recording: The cultural world of Elizabethan England
Article
In this Virtual Branch talk Professor Emma Smith provides a preview of her current research, which explores the lives and cultural undercurrents of Elizabethan England. What was influencing their cultural tastes and how much of it was new, or had it all been seen before?
Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare...
Virtual Branch Recording: The cultural world of Elizabethan England
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Virtual Branch Recording: Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife
Lives of medieval women
What was life really like for women in the medieval period? How did they think about sex, death and God? Could they live independent lives?
Few women had the luxury of writing down their thoughts and feelings during medieval times. But remarkably, there are at least four who did: Marie de France,...
Virtual Branch Recording: Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife
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Recorded webinar: Mapping uncertainty - Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
Retracing the trajectories of young survivors in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust
Recorded webinar: Mapping uncertainty - Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
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Virtual Branch Recording: Vagabonds versus the Mendicity Society
Article
Red Lion Square was long one of London's most genteel addresses, home to nobles, scholars, and professionals. But on 25 March 1818, one house on the south side opened its doors to quite another class of person, as the Mendicity Society began its business. Set up to solve the growing...
Virtual Branch Recording: Vagabonds versus the Mendicity Society
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Virtual Branch Recording: Crusader Criminals
Article
The religious wars of the Crusades are renowned for their military engagements. But the period was witness to brutality beyond the battlefield. More so than any other medieval war zone, the Holy Land was rife with unprecedented levels of criminality and violence.
In the first history of its kind, Steve Tibble explores...
Virtual Branch Recording: Crusader Criminals
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Virtual Branch Recording: The Women of the Anarchy
Article
In 1135 Stephen of Blois usurped the throne, stealing it from his cousin Empress Matilda and sparking a nineteen-year civil war that would become known as the Anarchy, one of the bloodiest periods in English history. On the one side is Empress Matilda. On the other side is her cousin,...
Virtual Branch Recording: The Women of the Anarchy
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Virtual Branch Recording: The Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949
Diaries and Personal Experiences
In this talk Professor Henrietta Harrison uses diary records to think about the experience of living through the revolution in China in 1949, focussing on what it meant to Chinese people, how they learned about its practices and ideology, and how this changed their lives - whether they were radical intellectuals returning...
Virtual Branch Recording: The Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949
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Virtual Branch Recording: Humans
The 300,000 year struggle for equality
In this Virtual Branch talk, Dr Alvin Finkel challenges claims that egalitarian, peaceful societies disappeared with the founding of agriculture or with the founding of state-level social organisation.
Different authors have suggested that early human society was essentially egalitarian in nature, with hierarchies only later becoming common. The point at which...
Virtual Branch Recording: Humans
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Virtual Branch Recording: The House of Dudley
Article
The Dudleys thrived at the court of Henry VII, but were sacrificed to the popularity of Henry VIII. Rising to prominence in the reign of Edward VI, the Dudleys lost it all by advancing Jane Grey to the throne over Mary I. That was until the reign of Elizabeth I,...
Virtual Branch Recording: The House of Dudley
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Recorded webinar: Henry VIII on Tour
Finding a new perspective on the Tudors
During his lifetime, Henry VIII journeyed throughout his kingdom in what are known as royal 'progresses'. In this webinar, Anthony Musson will share research from the AHRC-funded 'Henry on Tour' project which seeks to reassess these progresses by exploring archival sources, archaeology, music and material culture. In addition to contributing...
Recorded webinar: Henry VIII on Tour
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Recorded webinar: John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War
An enduring counterfactual
Would US President John F. Kennedy have avoided the catastrophe that became the Vietnam War if Lee Harvey Oswald had not assassinated him in Dallas on that fateful day of 22 November 1963? This question – or a version of it – has animated discussions of the Vietnam War for...
Recorded webinar: John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War
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Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2024 - Professor Catherine Hall
Article
Addressing issues of the legacies of racism created by the transatlantic slave trade and the narratives of its abolition
The Medlicott Medal is awarded annually for outstanding services and contributions to history. This year the Medal went to Professor Catherine Hall, who is Emerita Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at...
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2024 - Professor Catherine Hall
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Recorded Webinar: Why have the Chinese rediscovered World War II?
Article
The Chinese regime never used to want to talk about their country’s experience in World War Two. The Japanese occupation of parts of China was felt to be a humiliating episode that was best forgotten, and the Communists were uncomfortable that their nationalist enemy Chiang Kai-Shek had been China’s main...
Recorded Webinar: Why have the Chinese rediscovered World War II?
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Virtual Branch Recording: Shylock's Venice
The remarkable history of Venice’s Jews and the Ghetto
This is the story of the Venice Ghetto, the corner of the city where Jews were exiled; free to walk the streets by day, locked behind gates and walls at night. Yet, gates and walls notwithstanding, from its establishment in 1516 until the fall of Venice in 1798, the ghetto...
Virtual Branch Recording: Shylock's Venice
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Recorded webinar: Black Germans: the last forgotten victims of the Nazis?
Article
In this webinar, Professor Robbie Aitken looks at the experiences of Black residents in Germany during the Nazi period. Why have they been largely written out of larger histories of the Third Reich? Professor Aitken suggests that there was a genocidal intent in Nazi policy towards them, signalled partly by...
Recorded webinar: Black Germans: the last forgotten victims of the Nazis?
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Virtual Branch Recording: From Pirates to Princes: Normans in Eleventh Century Europe
Article
Normandy originated from a grant of land to Rollo, a Viking leader, in the early tenth century. By the end of that century Normans were to be found in southern Italy, then in Britain and, at the end of the eleventh century, in the near East on the First Crusade....
Virtual Branch Recording: From Pirates to Princes: Normans in Eleventh Century Europe
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Recorded Webinar: Understanding Lenin’s Government, 1917-24
Article
In this webinar Dr Douds examines the nature of political authority in the nascent Soviet Republic and the institutional structures, practices and ideology of government in the Lenin period. She considers how Communist Party dictatorship and the monolithic party-state emerged in the early years following the October Revolution of 1917...
Recorded Webinar: Understanding Lenin’s Government, 1917-24
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Recorded Webinar: New Approaches to Classical Sparta
Article
This webinar starts with a basic overview of the city-states of Classical Greece (roughly 500 to 350 BC) and Sparta’s place within their geography and history. It then looks at some common myths about the nature of Spartan society and politics, focusing on areas where recent research has transformed our...
Recorded Webinar: New Approaches to Classical Sparta
