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Australia Day and the Struggle to Control a Nation’s History
by Eleanor Russell On the 26th of January 1788 eleven ships under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip sailed into Port Jackson, now known as Sydney Harbour, carrying the first of more than 150,000 convicts sent to the new penal colony in Australia. The experiences of these convicts, and of the naval and military personnel,…
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Sweet harmony or rough music? Singing in the seventeenth century
By Carys Brown | @HistoryCarys If you’ve ever been in a roaring rugby crowd, a church full of carol singers, or even just broken into song in the shower, you’ve probably noticed that singing can have a powerful effect. The physical, psychological, and social benefits of singing are now widely recognised, although the underlying reasons behind…
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The trials and tribulations of the cross-border historian
By Zoe Farrell | @zoeffarrell Writing in History Today this January, Suzannah Lipscomb, the TV historian and fellow of the New College of Humanities, urged us to remember that ‘no island is an island.’[1] In essence, what Lipscomb argued is that in these times of great uncertainty and heightened feelings of hostility towards ‘the other,’ it…
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The Wandering Historian: Reflections on a Year of Research Abroad
In the second of our posts on doing research abroad, Tom Smith (@TomEtesonSmith) traverses the United States. Working on American history from a British university as I do, it was inevitable that at some point during my PhD research I was going to have to spend some time abroad. Courtesy of two Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded…
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Snap elections: a brief historical guide
A week ago UK Prime Minister Theresa May caught almost everyone by surprise by calling an election for the beginning of June. As the dust settles and the party machines grind into action, Carys Brown (@HistoryCarys) takes a brief look at the key facts.
doinghistoryinpublic.org 