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Posts tagged ‘methodology’

Feb 19

7 Comments

How do historians write?

By Tom Goodwin, @tgooders

Thomas is an MPhil student in Early Modern History. He is currently researching sixteenth-century Italian heretics and their use of the printing press.

I spent the morning putting in a comma; I spent the afternoon taking it out – Oscar Wilde

Writing history remains something of a dark art. From the beginning of your degree in history, there is a great deal of focus on how to do research: that is, how one should approach sources and analyse historical arguments, covering a wide range of different methods and theoretical approaches. Read more

Feb 3

And the rest as they say… (a manifesto for Techno-enviro-cultural-socioeconomic-politics)

By Kayt Button

When we think about historical research, it is easy to picture someone trapped behind piles of dusty literature and papers, getting lost in the minutiae of their chosen subject. After all, years of study of history have preceded their final, chosen, specialised subject of “The Pig War of 1859”!

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May 8

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Five Do’s and Don’ts for Using Digital Newspapers

By Nathaniel Zelinsky

Nathaniel Zelinsky is an MPhil student in Historical Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Digitized newspaper databases are an increasingly popular resource for young students of history. It is easy to understand their appeal to the “Google” generation: from the comfort of your own bedroom, you can access countless primary sources without going to a library. I personally use a lot of digitized newspapers in my MPhil thesis on Second World War propaganda. Unfortunately, I think too many professors, especially older ones, often point their students to newspaper databases without much practical advice.

This post contains my top five “do’s” and “don’ts” for first time users of digitized newspapers. This advice might be especially helpful for undergraduates or even high school students. Read more

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