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Recorded webinar: Researching the history of migration and refugees in Europe
When the present informs the past
Research on the history of migration continues to flourish and grow, but scholarship is also becoming increasingly splintered, often focusing on particular settings or population groups. Migration is often used as a way to discuss questions of national identity or diverse religious, ethnic, religious and local identities in the UK,...
Recorded webinar: Researching the history of migration and refugees in Europe
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Recorded webinar: Prosthetics and assistive technology in ancient Greece and Rome
Article
In this webinar, Jane Draycott shares her research on prostheses and assistive technology in ancient Greece, Rome and the neighbouring civilisations. She outlines the findings from her 2023 book on this subject, which arose from a grant to visit museums around the UK to access surviving ancient prostheses and modern...
Recorded webinar: Prosthetics and assistive technology in ancient Greece and Rome
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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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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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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: Tudor Liveliness?
Discovering Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England
In Tudor England, artworks were often described as ‘lively’. What did this mean in a culture where naturalism was an alien concept? And in a time of religious upheaval, when the misuse of images might lure the soul to hell, how could liveliness be a good thing?
In this talk...
Virtual Branch recording: Tudor Liveliness?
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Virtual Branch recording: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom
The Black Crown
How did a man born enslaved on a plantation triumph over Napoleon's invading troops and become king of the first free black nation in the Americas? This is the forgotten, remarkable story of Henry Christophe. Christophe fought as a child soldier in the American War of Independence, before serving in...
Virtual Branch recording: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom
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Virtual Branch recording: Empires of the Normans
Virtual Branch Film
How did descendants of Viking marauders come to dominate Western Europe and the Mediterranean, from the British Isles to North Africa, and Lisbon to the Holy Land and the Middle East?
In this Virtual Branch talk Levi Roach, author of Empires of the Normans, tells a tale of ambitious adventures...
Virtual Branch recording: Empires of the Normans
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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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Film: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire
Age of Emergency
In the 1950s, Britain fought a series of brutal wars against insurgents in the colonies of Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus. How did people at home experience these wars? How did they learn about the use of torture and other unsettling tactics? And how did they respond to this knowledge?
In...
Film: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire
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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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Film: A short history of Islamic thought
Article
In his book of the same name, A short history of Islamic thought, Dr Fitzroy Morrissey provides a concise introduction to the origins and sources of Islamic thought, from its beginnings in the 7th century to the current moment.
In this talk he explores the major ideas and introduces the...
Film: A short history of Islamic thought
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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: Mass-Observing Modern Britain
Article
Mass-Observation is probably the most consistently useful source for the study of mid and late 20th social lives Britain. It was established in 1937 with the aim of investigating ordinary life and developing an 'anthropology of ourselves.' It used a range of different methods to collect information, from recording overheard...
Recorded Webinar: Mass-Observing Modern Britain
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Recorded Webinar: Writing historical fiction - Writing and revision
Article
In this second webinar in our series on writing historical fiction, author Tony Bradman talks about the actual process of writing the story, with examples. The difficulty of the first page - how to start your story with impact and make sure the reader is gripped from the first line....
Recorded Webinar: Writing historical fiction - Writing and revision
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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: Teaching the 'People's History' of the Munich Crisis
Mental health, class, gender and diversity
Professor Julie Gottlieb has written extensively on inter-war British political and gender history, and her more recent work has provided alternative perspectives on seemingly settled debates in the historiography of British foreign policy and the history of appeasement. Through the lens of women/gender, social history, and now psychology/emotion, she argues for a...
Recorded webinar: Teaching the 'People's History' of the Munich Crisis
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Recorded Webinar: Writing historical fiction - Research and planning
Article
In this first webinar about writing historical fiction, author Tony Bradman will talk about how ideas grow from reading and thinking about history. Once you have a good idea, then you need to research it properly, starting with secondary sources for context, then moving on to more specific reading. Visits...
Recorded Webinar: Writing historical fiction - Research and planning
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Film: Rome in the world/the world in Rome with Dr Lucy Donkin
Article
To give you a taster of the fantastic sessions on offer at the HA's annual conference, we've published one of the sessions from the 2022 HA Conference on Rome in the world/the world in Rome with Dr Lucy Donkin.
In many cultures, earth has been used to represent a place...
Film: Rome in the world/the world in Rome with Dr Lucy Donkin
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Virtual Branch Recording: Women and the Reformations
Article
The Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, have long been told as stories of men. But women were central to the transformations that took place in Europe and beyond. What was life like for them in this turbulent period? How did their actions and ideas shape Christianity and influence societies around the world? ...
Virtual Branch Recording: Women and the Reformations
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Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
Article
Professor Jan Rüger joined the Virtual Branch on 9th February 2023 to talk about his book Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea, tracing a rich history of contact and conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to the Cold War.
For generations this North Sea island expressed a German...
Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
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Recorded Webinar: Ukraine and the Soviet Politics of Empire
Article
Dr Zbigniew Wojnowski is a historian based at the University of Oxford. He specialises in the history of the Cold War and is particularly interested in the history of Soviet social, cultural, and political interactions with Eastern Europe after 1945. In 2017, he published a book entitled The Near Abroad:...
Recorded Webinar: Ukraine and the Soviet Politics of Empire
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Film: Death in Diaspora
British & Irish Gravestones
As British and Irish migrants sought new lives in the Caribbean, Asia, North America and Australasia, they left a trail of physical remains where settlement occurred. Between the 17th and 20th centuries, gravestones and elaborate epitaphs documented identity and attachment to both their old and new worlds.
In this Virtual...
Film: Death in Diaspora
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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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Film: Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe
Virtual Branch Lecture Recording
Ravenna was the capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402 CE until 751 CE, then later, the capital of the immense kingdom of Theoderic the Goth and finally the centre of Byzantine power in Italy. In this talk Professor Judith Herrin explores the history of the city, its peoples...
Film: Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe
