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A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: A History of Nighttime (2005)
by Ella Hollowood The premise of A. Roger Ekirch’s At Day’s Close is a relatively simple one: what was nighttime like in Western society before industrialisation and modern lighting? Yet the result is a rich and fascinating study of ‘the forgotten half of the human experience’ and of a fundamental shift that took place between…
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History and United States prison policy: an interview with Dr Heather Ann Thompson (Part I)
By Jess Hope As a glance at the profiles of this blog team will show, ‘doing history in public’ reflects a goal of making our practices as historians more transparent, collaborative and accessible. Many historians I’ve spoken with also hope to demonstrate that their research matters to the public, and that it has important political,…
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History and United States prison policy: An interview with Dr Heather Ann Thompson (Part II)
by Jess Hope Last week we published the first of a two-part interview with Dr Heather Ann Thompson, whose research on the history of mass incarceration has frequently contributed to debates about prison policy in the United States. Addressing post-war urban crisis, the decline of the labour movement and the rightward shift in political power…
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World Factory: fabricating a digital quilt
by Katy Bond, Jess Hope and Anne Alexander Cambridge historians were recently invited to contribute research to World Factory, an interdisciplinary performance project exploring the global textile industry through the lenses of nineteenth-century Manchester and present-day China. A collaboration between Zoë Svendsen and Simon Daw of performing arts company Metis and Shanghai-based theatre director Zhao Chuan, it…
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Beach reading for historians (or why simple writing makes your argument smarter)
by Marta Musso Summer reading is always tricky for young academics. On the one hand, the summer holidays are the perfect and unique time of the year to relax and read all the pleasant, light novels that you never have time for. On the other hand, summer is also the time to catch up with…
doinghistoryinpublic.org 