Latest Posts
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LGBTQ+ History Month: Coming Out in the Archives, with Amy Austin and Vicky Iglikowski-Broad
Reposted from the Gender History Research Cluster. Join PhD Student Amy Austin in conversation with Vicky Iglikowski-Broad, principal records specialist in diverse histories at the National Archives, as they discuss accessing LGBTQ+ histories within the archives. Together, Amy and Victoria… Continue reading
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The Sagas, the Solstice and the Supernatural, by Anne Lawrence-Mathers
As a medievalist it is always satisfying to point out that many traditions can be traced back to the medieval period – and this applies also to the custom of setting and telling tales of ghosts and monsters at the… Continue reading
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A Ghostly Christmas Tale, by Professor David Stack
Charles Dickens loved Christmas and he loved a good ghost story too. His first attempt at a seasonal story, A Christmas Carol (1843), combined these two passions. The tale of Scrooge’s haunting and redemption was subtitled A Ghost Story of… Continue reading
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Christmas at Sea: 400 Years of the Festive Season Afloat, with Dr Richard Blakemore
Dr Richard Blakemore gave this talk as part of an event on ‘Christmas at Sea: 400 Years of the Festive Season Afloat’ on 7 December 2021, organised by the Royal Museums Greenwich and Institute of Historical Research Maritime History & Culture… Continue reading
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The Gothic ‘Other’ at Christmas, by Dan Renshaw
The tradition of telling scary stories at Christmas is an old one. Tales of ghouls and goblins during the festive season, dating back to the Elizabethan period, have become part of Christmas tradition. In the years before the First World… Continue reading
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Supernaturally chattering teeth: Romanticism and the politics of gathering winter fuel, by Dr Jeremy Burchardt
In recent years I’ve been researching and teaching on rural landscape and the way it has been represented in England since the late eighteenth century. It is widely agreed that the Romantic movement, and in particular the Romantic poets, played… Continue reading
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A Very Ghostly Christmas: St Nicholas, the Slaughtered Students and the Murdered Merchant, by Professor Anne Lawrence-Mathers
On the feast day of St Nicholas of Myra, we find out if the ‘Wondeworker’ Saint is a modern day Santa Claus or an early version of Sweeny Todd in these stories of ghostly apparitions, murder, and magic. Will there… Continue reading
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How to Find an Early Modern Witch, by Claire Smith
If you wanted to find a witch during the early modern period, one of the more notable people you could ask was Matthew Hopkins, self-declared Witchfinder General from 1644-1647. If, in the twenty-first century, you want to find evidence of… Continue reading
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Sugar and Slavery: Reproductive Mills, by Jude Reeves
I have been given the opportunity to share my experience working as an intern at the Mills Archive Trust on Watlington Street, a registered charity dedicated to the protection and preservation of records of milling history, in the summer of… Continue reading
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Abdulrazak Gurnah, the 2021 Nobel Literature Prize, and a Challenge to White Fragility, by Dr Heike I. Schmidt
NPR, the US American public radio station, was broadcasting some critical reporting on the day of the announcement of the 2021 Nobel Literature Prize, 7 October. The journalists were discussing that, while the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o had been… Continue reading
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