Author: Doing History in Public

  • ‘Turning Botches into Beauty’: The Early Modern Origins of the Pimple Patch

    ‘Turning Botches into Beauty’: The Early Modern Origins of the Pimple Patch

    by Marlo Avidon (@MarloAvidon) Today, it’s not uncommon to see someone walking down the street with a hydrocolloid patch stuck to their cheek, chin, or forehead to cover and treat a pimple. While many of these acne patches are designed to remain unseen, a scroll through the websites of popular beauty suppliers reveal a diverse…

  • Travelling the World: The Travelogue as a Source

    Travelling the World: The Travelogue as a Source

    by Tiéphaine Thomason (@teaphaine) It’s a soggy, grey October. The boiler’s acting up, you’re stuck at home in a jumper, wishing you were elsewhere. At times like this, it seems natural to gravitate towards tales of warmer places. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Tim Cope’s ‘On the Trail of Genghis…

  • Ghost Stories: a study of Spirit Photography

    Ghost Stories: a study of Spirit Photography

    By Samuel Houlberg Ghosts. Perfect Autumnal Halloween fare. Who doesn’t love sitting around a fire on a cold evening telling ghost stories? There’s something in the human psyche that’s easily drawn to them, with tales of ghostly occurrences stretching from Roman chain-jangling horrors, to the Romantic competitions of the Villa Diodati, and reappearing in the…

  • Jake Bransgrove – Historian Highlight

    Jake Bransgrove – Historian Highlight

    Jake Bransgrove, interviewed by Tiéphaine Thomason Historian Highlight is an ongoing series sharing the research experiences of historians in the History Faculty in Cambridge and beyond. For our latest post, we sat down with Jake Bransgrove, a second-year PhD candidate at Trinity Hall, who will be taking over our Historian Highlight series this academic year.…

  • Reviewing “Antisemitism: A (((Musical)))” 17-28 October 2023: What does it mean to be a ‘wandering jew’?

    Reviewing “Antisemitism: A (((Musical)))” 17-28 October 2023:  What does it mean to be a ‘wandering jew’?

    By Cailee Davis ‘The following post is not a pronouncement on the situation in Israel and Palestine and was scheduled prior to the start of these events. We would note that the author of the musical, Uri Agnon, has expressed solidarity with Palestinians and called for a ceasefire across various social media platforms.’ This October,…