Author: Doing History in Public

  • Florals for spring? Why artificial flowers can be ground-breaking

    Florals for spring? Why artificial flowers can be ground-breaking

    By Zara Kesterton (@ZaraKesterton) If you followed the Met Gala this year, you will have noticed a blossoming of flowers on the red carpet. These were not your typical chintzy floral-print dresses, though: the flowers were big, bold, and often avant-garde. Whatever your position on the Met Costume Institute’s celebration of controversial designer Karl Lagerfeld,…

  • Two Maps of the Mediterranean

    Two Maps of the Mediterranean

    Two maps of the Mediterranean, one included in the medieval cosmological treatise Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes (Kitāb Gharā’ib al-funūn wa-mulaḥ al-ʿuyūn) and the other frequently reproduced in modern scholarship, first appear very distinct, but perhaps share a similarity: they reflect a mariner’s view of the Mediterranean.

  • Claribel-ware: Ballads, Royalties, and the Birth of the Music Industry in 1860s Britain

    Claribel-ware: Ballads, Royalties, and the Birth of the Music Industry in 1860s Britain

    By Whitney Thompson, Linktree “It would be a curious though a humiliating study,” begins a January 1867 article in the music periodical The Orchestra, “to speculate to what extent the future historian of art in Great Britain (…) will ascribe the decline of song music to the influence of the Royalty system.” Although the “royalty…

  • ‘Out of the Shadows’: A DHP Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon

    ‘Out of the Shadows’: A DHP Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon

    By Zara Kesterton On 24 May, Doing History in Public hosted our first ever Wikipedia edit-a-thon. Edit-a-thons are events where new and established editors get together to learn new skills, and work towards improving information on Wikipedia around a theme. Our theme for this event was ‘Out of the Shadows’. We aimed to improve knowledge…

  • Alex White – Historian Highlight

    Alex White – Historian Highlight

    Alex White (@alex_j_white), interviewed by Zara Kesterton Historian Highlight is an ongoing series sharing the research experiences of historians in the History Faculty in Cambridge. We ask students how they came to research their topic, their favourite archival find, as well as the best (and worst) advice they’ve received as academics in training. History is…