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From the Jarrow Crusade to the Brexit Blues: historical protests and expressions of direct action
By Aoife O’Leary McNeice (@aolmcn) Petitions, marches and referendums have been in the news a lot lately, manifestations of frustration from people who do not feel represented by those in power, and so undertake direct action in an attempt to gain leverage, produce change, or simply quell an increasing feeling of powerlessness. I am of course referencing…
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Sympathising with the Past?
By Dominic Birch (Dominic.birch@gmail.com) One of the most pleasurable parts of archival work is discovering new stories, narratives and characters. In the type of work I do (early modern social history) some subjects seem to jump out of the page, demanding attention. Take, for instance, the case of Sara and Elizabeth Mayhew, two women who…
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“Separate but equal”? The challenges of life as an African American under Jim Crow
By Zack Rose (zr239@cam.ac.uk) Under the Jim Crow laws (1877-1950s), segregation based on race was legally justified in the United States.1 The key Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v Ferguson (1896) was that it was not unconstitutional to enforce racial segregation, so long as segregated facilities were “separate but equal”.2 However, it is well known…
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Reclaiming Spaces: CUSU and GU Welfare and Women’s Officer’s campaigns
By Claire Sosienski Smith & Christine Pungong, (welfare@cusu.cam.ac.uk & womens@cusu.cam.ac.uk) My experience as a student at Cambridge centred around the feminist activism I chose to get involved in, as part of the Women’s Campaign. I learned that feminist work is legacy work in the physical spaces I shared and created with women and non-binary people.…
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Who do I think I am? – My experience with AncestryDNA
By Stephanie Brown (@StephEmmaBrown) Thanks to programmes like Who Do You Think You Are? there has never been more interest in family history. Since the turn of the century, family historians have started to look beyond traditional records such as the census, and birth, death, and marriage indices to new scientific methods. DNA tests are now…
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