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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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The Congo’s and Belgium’s shared past, present and future

By Eva Schalbroeck As a historian, I strongly believe in studying history for its own sake, rather than from today’s perspective. As someone who devours news from every type of media outlet, I cannot help but see the connections between the news on the Democratic Republic of Congo and my research on Belgian colonialism. Barely…
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Daydreaming in Linoleum: Postwar Advertisements and Domestic Fictions

By Kate Schneider Every era has material nova that signal the newness of the present age. In the 1930s, it was the shine of early plastics such as Bakelite and celluloid that made them attractive modern surfaces. But in the 1950s and 1960s, domestic daydreams about ideal homes were played out in the medium of…
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Royal babies: a late-nineteenth-century perspective

By Helen Sunderland (@hl_sunderland) Last week, the world’s media was fixed on the arrival of another royal baby. At less than a week old, pictures of Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, the first child of Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and the Queen’s eighth great-grandchild, have been shared around the globe. Although the…
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‘Living’ the museum experience: The development of open-air museums in Britain

By Emily Redican-Bradford How will museums look in the future? That’s the question that the #FutureMuseum Project seeks to answer. Through an online collaboration platform, international experts in the heritage sector have been sharing their views about how the industry will change in coming years.[1] One of the most prominent ideas is that the success…
