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Posts from the ‘Research’ Category

Jun 8

Vampires, Ghosts, and Spirits on Santorini: The Affectivity of a Sulphuric Landscape

By Lavinia Gambini (@GambiniLavinia)  

Today known for its luxury tourism, high-end ‘destination weddings’, and romantic ‘Instagrammability’, Santorini was for seventeenth-century Westerners a ‘demonic’ island.[1] Early modern travellers to the Aegean encountered an unsettling landscape: they met a fragmented island torn into pieces by the many seismic and volcanic activities that had struck Santorini throughout the centuries.[2] Santorini’s red and yellow, sulphuric lava soil appeared to be touched by ‘infernal’ fires. We can imagine how early modern contemporaries smelt the sulphur, coughed when inhaling the volcanic exhalations, and marvelled at the ‘burnt’ layers of lava rock exposed by its mesmerising cliffs. From this sensory experience with the insular landscape, Western travellers to the Aegean believed that otherworldly powers were in action on Santorini.[3]

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Jun 1

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International Commonwealths: Public Diplomacy in 17th Century Europe

By Basil Bowdler (@BasilBowdler)

When allegations of Russian interference in the Brexit referendum and US general election of 2016 surfaced, it struck many as a new and disturbing development in public politics. But in reality, foreign powers have been attempting to manipulate public opinion to their own ends for much longer. In seventeenth-century Europe, as public opinion was first emerging as an arbiter in politics, foreign diplomats and agents exploited the print revolution and an explosion in access to news in order to sway newly empowered citizens to suit their own ends.

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May 27

Max Long – Historian Highlight

By Max Long (@max_long), interviewed by Cherish Watton (@CherishWatton), Series Editor

Historian Highlight is a new 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 all about how we tell stories – this series looks at the stories we have to tell as graduate students researching in unprecedented times. In the fourth post in the series, Max Long explains his research into the representation of ideas about nature in the mass media during the interwar period.

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May 11

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Who liberated Belgrade – and who cares who liberated Belgrade?

By Helena Trenkić (@helenakic)

In 1948 Tito’s Yugoslavia was expelled from the alliance of Marxist-Leninist parties known as Cominform. In the aftermath of the Tito-Stalin split, the narrative of who liberated Yugoslavia at the end of the Second World War – and in particular who liberated the capital, Belgrade – became hotly-contested history. 

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May 4

Smartphones in the archive

By Davide Martino (@DavideMartinoDM)

‘Writing this book would not have been possible without Samsung, whose phone was of invaluable help.’ If acknowledgments were an honest reflection of the research process, a similar sentence would probably feature in most scholarly works of the last decade. Though pencil and paper, as well as our eyes and hands, are not usually acknowledged, the use of a smartphone or camera probably should be, for it alters our relationship to the sources.

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Apr 29

Grace Whorrall-Campbell – Historian Highlight

By Grace Whorrall-Campbell, interviewed by Cherish Watton (@CherishWatton), Series Editor

Historian Highlight is a new 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 all about how we tell stories – this series looks at the stories we have to tell as graduate students researching in unprecedented times. In the second post in the series, Grace Whorrall-Campbell explains her research into the history of emotion and psychology in the mid-twentieth-century workplace.

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Apr 27

Women of the Manhattan Project

By Evangeline Leggatt (@evie_leggatt)

Traditional narratives of the Manhattan Project emphasise a group of heroic white male physicists in the United States who succeeded in creating, testing, and using the world’s first atomic weapons. Perhaps the most recognisable figure in atomic history was the project’s scientific leader, Dr J. R. Oppenheimer. Other prominent male figures include Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, and Enrico Fermi. What is missing from the narrative, however, are the contributions and experiences of the thousands of women who worked and lived on the Manhattan Project.

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Mar 16

David Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estatis

By Kate McGregor (@ks_mcgregor)

David Lyndsay is perhaps Scotland’s best, but least well known, poet and playwright.[1] Yet his work both reflects the vibrant culture of early modern Scotland and the deeply political ramifications drama could have during this period. One could imagine that the performance of a play written by Lyndsay was an eagerly anticipated event. The Great Hall of Linlithgow Palace was in January 1540 packed with the lairds and ladies of the Scottish court. With a fire crackling, the sights and smells of the Christmas season all around, a hush would surely have descended on the hall for the centre piece entertainment by Lyndsay.

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Mar 2

‘In Defense of Clara’: Contestation of the Female Body in the Spanish Anarchist Press

By Sophie Turbutt (@Sophie_Turbutt)

When twenty-year-old Federica Montseny advertised her first full-length novel, La Victoria, in her parents’ Spanish anarchist journal La Revista Blanca in 1925, she hardly could have imagined the drama that would unfold in its wake. Certainly, La Victoria was a deliberately provocative book. Its romantic plotlines flew in the face of expectation – even by some anarchist standards – but for heated debates about the book to litter the pages of La Revista Blanca for years afterwards was astonishing. So, what was it about La Victoria that triggered such an outpouring of admiration and vitriol from readers? Its politically tenacious, passionately independent, childless female protagonist: Clara.

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Feb 2

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Protestant Echoes and the Spirit of Calvinism

By Rory Bannerman (@BannermanRory)

If there is a work of sociology that has held more attention, generated more discussion, and created more controversy than any other, it is Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Released in 1905, its premise is based on Weber’s observation that Protestants, in particular Calvinists, appear to be more economically prosperous than their Catholic counterparts. This looked to be the case at both the individual and national levels. His research set out to find out if there was an element in Protestant thinking that was uniquely compatible with engaging in capitalism that would explain this. [1]

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Nov 3

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Questioning Modern Slavery Legislation through the Trade of SS Allach Porcelain

By Tristan Bromley @TefaBrom

  • An Allach Luftwaffe Officer. Image title ‘allach porcelain’, by TheSimple1, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. [link]
  • An Allach mouse model. Copyright KZ-Gedenkstätte Dachau, DaA O 1034, 45524.
  • The Allach manufactory mark. Image title ‘Porzellanmanufaktur Allach, Marke’ Public Domain image, author Nicholasweed. [link]

Porcelain is not something usually associated with Nazism. Yet from 1936–45, the Nazi SS, were fostering this precise link through the Allach Porcelain Manufactory, an SS company.[I] Amongst its produce were animal figurines, vases, candleholders, as well as models of SS men and other ‘Aryan’ figurines. Each piece bore the company’s mark of the double SS sig rune. This porcelain was not however only made by SS men. While the company was founded in the Munich suburb of Allach, most of its production was moved to a factory at Dachau in 1937, and from 1940 wartime labour shortages meant concentration camp labour was employed.[ii] A cursory internet search will reveal that despite these clear links to forced labour, Allach porcelain is still sold today by private dealers, auction houses, and on common marketplace platforms including eBay. It is easily purchasable from the UK and pieces sold internationally have fetched prices of thousands and tens of thousands of pounds, euros, and dollars.[iii]

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Oct 20

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Reckoning with Britain’s Colonial Past: The Mau Mau Detention Camps and Dedan Kimathi

By Lauren Brown @LaurenBroon

Britain has a complicated colonial history. Sadly, thousands of descendants from former colonial territories, still face the legacies of Britain’s hegemony. This is true for the Kikuyu, Embu and Neru people of Kenya. During the Mau Mau rebellion of 1952-1964, the British colonial government placed some 80,000 people from these ethnic groups in a ‘pipeline’ of detention camps after a series of violent attacks on British settlers and ‘loyalist’ Africans. Camp inmates were subjected to brutal interrogations, whippings, sexual assault and even castration.[1] Detainee letters cited a lack of food and poor sanitation, whilst David Anderson’s ‘Histories of the Hanged’ detailed the systematic hangings of many ‘hardcore’ prisoners.

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Oct 13

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Egyptian Hajj murals: a centuries old tradition

By Yayha Nurgat (@yahyanurgat)

Every year, Muslims from across the world travel to the city of Mecca in order to undertake the Hajj, the fifth and final pillar of Islam. In many rural areas of modern-day Egypt, pilgrims return from Mecca to find the exterior of their home adorned with illustrations of the holy sites of the Hajj, along with various other images and calligraphy (see figs. 1, 2 and 3).[1]

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Jun 30

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Moscow’s Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy: A Soviet-era Exposition and the Russian State

By Liya Wizevich (@liyawizevich)

In Soviet Union there was vast human and geographical diversity, leading the government to look for ways to not benefit from it by showcasing the social, economic and geographical differences. This national diversity was grandiosely displayed nowhere better than in Moscow’s Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy, (VDNKh).[1] Read more

Jun 2

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The Hanging Baskets of a Medieval German Prague: English Travel Literature from 1815 to 1848

By Jana Hunter @janakhunter

At the heart of Europe lies Prague: a city centred around the River Moldau, embodying antiquity, mysticism and the sublime. Its imposing and grandiose scenes received little attention from travel writers up until the Napoleonic Wars. Through travel literature, Prague emerged as a fantastical city providing escapism, both physically and mentally, for travellers. Mapped like a medieval German city, and located in Central Europe, Prague was home to a dynamic cultural milieu. Yet, it was also deemed to be uncivilised, possessing an Oriental grandeur. This contentious portrayal epitomises the difficulty travellers had – and continue to have – in defining the city and challenges the powerful concept of a binary Europe.

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May 19

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Argentina 1910: Latin America’s Guardian

By Jordan Buchanan

Argentina was once the front-runner in the defence of Latin America from incipient U.S. imperialism. The South American republic celebrated the centenary of its declaration of independence in 1910, firmly established as the leading economy in the region.[1] In the prelude to Argentina’s anniversary, The Economist acclaimed that ‘it is probable that Argentina in the twentieth century may make as rapid progress as did the United States in the nineteenth.’[2] Argentina was attracting international praise for the success for its export-oriented economy that had stimulated average annual growth in export income by 14.1% between 1900-1910.[3]

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May 12

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Knitting the Archives

If you walk into any charity shop, you are more than likely to find, somewhere, a box or folder full of old knitting patterns. The majority of people would overlook these – to those that cannot knit, the sheets look like indecipherable code, but even to those that can, the patterns are considered dated. But these publications are an archive of everyday material culture of their own, which merit engagement.

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Mar 31

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How (not) to communicate historical research

By Davide Martino

Mr D. is the History teacher to whom I owe my passion for the subject. A historian of Byzantium, he was nonetheless able to take us through late medieval civic government in the Low Countries, and the politicisation of historical memory in the twentieth century. Among his teachings, there was one I always struggled to relate to: his extreme diffidence towards Wikipedia. Recently, however, I am starting to think that he may have had a point.

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Jan 14

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Tour de Force: A Selected History of Guided Tours

By Clemency Hinton (@clemencyhinton)

Guided tours are part and parcel of today’s tourism industry. In fact, there are over 1,800 registered professional tour guides in the UK alone.[1] Tour guides (also known as rangers, couriers or interpreters) can be traced through history, leading one scholar to describe guiding as likely to be ‘among the world’s oldest professions.’[2] The World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations defines a ‘Tourist Guide’ as a qualified person who ‘guides visitors in the language of their choice and interprets the cultural and natural heritage of an area.’[3] However, guides have existed long before they became part of a recognised profession.

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Dec 24

The Cancellation of Christmas

Philippa Carter (@extispicium)

In The accomplisht cook (1660), the English chef Robert May recommended to his readers a feast ‘to be used at Festival Times, as Twelfth Day [of Christmas]’. All the budding cook had to do, May explained, was to construct – in pastry – a castle, a ship laced with gunpowder, a wine-filled stag impaled with an arrow, one pie containing live frogs, and another live birds. Once served, it was simply a matter of persuading ‘some of the Ladies’ Read more

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