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Featured Historian: Brendan Smith

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In the latest in our regular ‘Featured Historian’ series, we caught up with Brendan Smith.

Brendan is Professor of Medieval History. His published works concern medieval Ireland and in particular the consequences there of English colonisation. His teaching ranges from the impact of the Black Death on late medieval England to the reception of the Norman Conquest in nineteenth-century historical discourse.

Hi Brendan, thanks for doing us. What’s the title of your next book? What’s it about?
A likely title for my next book is The Migrants’ Tale: Moving Around Medieval Britain and Ireland.

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Featured Historian: Beth Rebisz

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In the latest in our regular feature, we caught up with Beth Rebisz to hear about her a recent exhibition she worked on in Nairobi. Beth is a Lecturer in the History of Modern Africa. Her research explores Kenyan women’s experiences during the Mau Mau conflict, 1952-1960. In doing so, her research focuses on Britain’s forced resettlement of Kenyans during this period and considers the relationship between colonial counter-insurgency warfare and international humanitarianism in the late-colonial era.

Picture shows Beth Rebisz smiling, with a striped pole in the background

Hi Beth, thanks for joining us to talk about the exhibition you’ve recently been working on. Can you tell us what ‘Barbed Wire Village’ is about?

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Featured Historian: Hilary Carey

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In the latest in our regular series, we caught up with Prof. Hilary Carey to talk about her interests in the histories of religion and empire.

Hilary Carey is Professor of Imperial and Religious History and Research Director in the Faculty of Arts. She trained as a medievalist originally, but these days works mostly on colonial religious history. Her most recent book, Empire of Hell (CUP, 2019) was a religious history of the campaign to end convict transportation from Britain and Ireland to penal colonies in Australia, Bermuda and Gibraltar.

Hi Hilary, thanks for joining us! What’s the title of your new research project?

I am really excited that Sumita Mukherjee and I have been funded by the AHRC for the next three years. Our project is called ‘Mariners: religion, race and empire in British ports, 1801-1914’. Continue reading →

Becoming a Public Historian: Cissy Walmsley

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In this series, Dr Jessica Moody, unit co-ordinator of the third year Practice-Based Dissertation option, interviews students about their projects and experiences of this unit. The Practice-Based Dissertation was first introduced at Bristol in 2020-21 and enables students to produce a practical, public-facing ‘public history’ output as well as a 5000 word Critical Reflective Report.  

In this interview, Jessica talks to Cissy Walmsley about her project.   Continue reading →

Becoming a Public Historian: Isabel King

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In this series, Dr Jessica Moody, unit co-ordinator of the third year Practice-Based Dissertation option, interviews students about their projects and experiences of this unit. The Practice-Based Dissertation was first introduced at Bristol in 2020-21 and enables students to produce a practical, public-facing ‘public history’ output as well as a 5000 word Critical Reflective Report.

In this interview, Jessica talks to Isabel King about her project. Continue reading →

Becoming a Public Historian: Kim Singh-Sall

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In this series, Dr Jessica Moody, unit co-ordinator of the third year Practice-Based Dissertation option, interviews students about their projects and experiences of this unit. The Practice-Based Dissertation was first introduced at Bristol in 2020-21 and enables students to produce a practical, public-facing ‘public history’ output as well as a 5000 word Critical Reflective Report.

In this interview, Jessica talks to Kim Singh-Sall about her project.  Continue reading →

Featured Historian: Lorenzo Costaguta

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In the latest in our series on historians here at Bristol, we caught up with Lorenzo Costaguta to talk race, class and socialism.

Lorenzo Costaguta is a Lecturer in U.S. History. He is a historian of race and class, with a focus on socialist movements in the United States and Europe. At Bristol, he teaches on radicalism in the United States, labour, race, capitalism, and the American empire.  Continue reading →

Disability History Month Snapshots: Fitting and Misfitting

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In the third of our posts for Disability History Month, Lena Ferriday writes about the novelist Dinah Craik.

In 1881, at the age of fifty-five and six years before her death, novelist Dinah Craik took a sixteen-day excursion around the Cornish coastline. Craik’s reflections on this experience, recorded in a published travel journal, bring to attention a range of narratives regarding differently abled bodies which converged at the nineteenth-century coast, which became seen as a space which emphasised a linear pathway from illness to health, which differently abled bodies did not conform to. This post highlights the way in which discourses of different abilities have historically relied on the fit, or misfit, between body and environment.

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Reflections on Disability History Month

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This Disability History Month, writes Dr. Andy Flack,we would do well to remember that the past is not always a foreign country.

Injustice, exploitation, and pain are happening today, and they can be stopped.  Indeed, Disability History Month (November-December), like the International Day of People with Disabilities (3 December) is a present danger to people living with disabilities.

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