Sep 30
by Tiia Sahrakorpi and Janine Noack
This morning the second episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme, Germany: Memories of a Nation aired. Janine Noack (JN) and Tiia Sahrakorpi (TS) provided...
by Tiia Sahrakorpi and Janine Noack
This morning, the first episode of the BBC radio 4 programme Germany: Memories of a Nation aired. Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, presented...
A under-researched field is women in diplomatic history. Furthering this field would enhance the study of diplomatic history itself as mostly men are in the forefront as leaders of diplomatic missions. This leads to questions such as, “how to treat gender as a concept in foreign affairs and how to write about women in foreign affairs”? There are problems concerning the sources on women’s involvment in diplomatic history, which makes it difficult for historians to find out exactly what was the extent of influence.
“Why are Finnish people constantly discussing World War II?” The Second World War is brought up by many elderly Finns in interviews concerning Russia’s actions today in relation to Finland. World War II still forms an important part of Finnish cultural memory and self-identification. However, the Finnish Civil War of 1918 does not have a part in the national narrative that I have heard from my own family. Why didn’t my family discuss it more openly, I contemplated recently. As a historian, I wondered: what impact does this narrative have on Finnish society?
While there are a plethora of works on Nazis from every aspect ever, and no list can include everything, I’ve picked out my favourite books and the most useful books that I’ve used for my research at both a BA level and MPhil/MA level. These works are just starting-off points on Nazi German cultural and social history that have always jumped out of bibliographies.
Was the Great War a great mistake? 100 years on, historians and the public reflect on Britain’s involvement in World War One – a debate led by Niall Ferguson on BBC Two, Friday 28 February 2014. It then was moved to Radio 5 Live at 10.30 pm – 11.30 pm through which Professor Helen Weinstein (@historyworkstv) chaired the online debate via blogging and Twitter. Overall, over 4000 tweets were sent to #WW1, #pityofwar and #necessarywar. Here are some exerts from the debates found on Twitter: a TINY sampling of the various debates and thoughts of viewers and listeners. Read more
by Janine Noack and Tiia Sahrakorpi
On January 28th, 2014 Sir Richard J. Evans gave a Q&A session to Cambridge University MPhil and Ph.D students on what it has been like to work and research as a prominent historian in the digital age and earlier. Students sent in various questions about his career and how history has changed since he was a student.
I recently had my first, real archive visit to a foreign country. I had just started doing research on Hitler Youth magazines from c.1933-1938 for my dissertation and the only place to get the material I needed was in Germany. Before I had really even begun my project I had spent some time googling around where I could find primary sources for my potential project. I found the website for the German national archive and they had a list of all of their holdings, through which I found what I was looking for. It was rather easy, but it took some time to find out where everything was held.
