In this blog post, Bristol lecturer Amy Edwards reflects on her new project exploring women and self-employment and on working with policy makers.

Over the past 18 months I have been running an AHRC-funded project called ‘The Secret of My Success’: Women and Self-Employment in Britain (1970-2000) which focuses on the recent history of women’s self-employment. The aim of the project is to understand the motivations and lived experiences of women who worked for themselves in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

A lot of the work I’ve done for this project has involved familiar historical work. I travelled to archives to consult the records of companies like Avon Cosmetics, who hired thousands of women to work as independent sales representatives. I spent hours sifting through digitized newspapers, looking for reports featuring women entrepreneurs. I also conducted oral histories with women who worked for themselves during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, listening to stories about lives shaped by family obligation, friendship, house moves, illnesses, career breaks, and economic upheaval.

Something less familiar, has been the experience of translating my historical findings for non-academic audiences – or more specifically, for policymakers. A central aim of the project is to explore the opportunities, barriers, and conditions that affected self-employed women in the past, but to also think about what this can tell us about women’s working lives in the present. As a contemporary historian, I’m inherently interested in solving the puzzle of how we got to where we are today.

To this end, I have recently been working with PolicyBristol, a team based at the university who support academics in using their research to shape policy at local, national, and international levels. With their help, I have been turning my research into a series of government select committee evidence submissions. Select Committees form part of the daily work of parliamentarians: they launch inquiries into current issues, and gather evidence from members of the public, academics, practitioners, businesses, think tanks, and activists. Committees then report their findings to government, who have 60 days to respond. In other words, submitting research to a relevant inquiry is a great way to inform policy development in key areas such as the economy, education, environment, and culture.

For this project, I identified two active inquiries that were relevant to the research I had been conducting: one for the House of Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee, and one for the House of Lords Home-Based Working Select Committee. I quickly learnt the importance of directly responding to the specific questions that each Committee set out as part of its call for evidence. Submissions also need to be concise, with key findings highlighted at the top: working parliamentarians don’t have hours of free time to read an entire thesis on a topic. They do, however, want specific recommendations – that is, evidence-based suggestions for how a particular issue might be addressed. This requires a knowledge not only of your own research area, but also of the current policy-landscape. It’s important to ask yourself what is the need/ problem that government is trying to address? What policies already exist in this area? Have other stakeholders – advocacy groups, think tanks, charities etc. – already had their say, and if so, what were their recommendations?  And ultimately, for a historian, the question is: what can a historical perspective add here? What does placing this issue into a longer context do to change our understanding of it (and how it might be tackled today)?

This was a really different way of writing, or even thinking about, a historical research project. Others have written much more insightfully than I can here, about the benefits and challenges of using historical knowledge to solve present-day problems (something that John Tosh labelled  Applied History). Crossing the bridge between academia and policy is tricky work. But it is also rewarding. I found translating my ideas about the relationship between emotions, social relations, time, space, and work into practical, applicable policy recommendations incredibly useful. It pushed me towards really thinking about historical subjects as people living through the historical phenomena I usually try to analyse. I had to consider what might have changed their lives had politicians at the time paid more mind to their experiences.

Most of all it reminded me of one of my favourite quotes from researcher and translator Graham Burchell, when he discussed his ‘experience of not being a citizen of the community or republic of thought and action in which one nevertheless is unavoidably implicated or involved’ – that is, of feeling out of place in society. In such a situation, Burchell reminds us how important it is to reveal ‘the (often quite recent) inventedness of our world’.[1] I think that history is a great tool for doing just that: it shows us that how we organise society, politics, and the economy is neither inevitable nor enduring. As such, using our research to remind those in power that we need more than sheer presentism to tackle the plurality of issues we face today, is work worth doing.

Dr Amy Edwards is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol and historian of twentieth and twenty-first century Britain. Her research focuses on cultures of capitalism, investment, and enterprise. Her first book, Are We Rich Yet? (UCP, 2022) explains how financial markets became so central to British society, not only economically and politically, but socially and culturally, too. She is now leading an AHRC-funded project titled ‘The Secret of My Success: Women and self-employment in Britain, c.1970-2000’.

Find Amy on:

Bluesky: @somsproject.bsky.social

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/somsdramyedwards

Instagram: somsproject

[1] Graham Burchell, ‘Liberal Government and Techniques of the Self’ in, Andrew Barry, Thomas Osborne, and Nikolas Rose (eds.), Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-liberalism and Rationalities of Government (London: UCL Press, 1996), 19-36, 30.

In this special post, we caught up with BA History graduates Rich Kennett and Tom Allen to hear about their textbook A New Focus on the British Empire, which has just been published by Hodder Education. Both Richard and Tom are history teachers. 

Hi Tom and Rich, thanks for joining us. OK, so the book sounds amazing. Can you tell us more?
A New Focus on the British Empire is a new history textbook for Key Stage 3 students (Year 7 to Year 9), which aims to tell a fuller story of the Empire than has often previously been taught in British schools. We were both editors on the book and wrote sections as part of an author team made up of 11 history teachers.

Most school textbooks have little input from academic historians. We wanted to change that. Throughout the project we have asked historians for their help, and they have been incredibly generous with their time and expertise. Some helped at the ideas stage; many helped at the manuscript stage, critiquing our work; and a good few even helped us to polish the final proofs. We feel this has made a far better product – more historically accurate and reflecting of current scholarship.

As Bristol alumni, our first port of call for help with the book was the history department where we had studied. Bristol historians helped massively. Erika Hanna and Brendan Smith helped with the sections on Ireland. Robert Bickers advised us on China. Beth Rebisz was involved with loads of the book including sections on Africa, colonial legacies and race. We also had help from Bristol academics from other departments, such as Natasha Robinson in the Department of Education.

Another way we wanted this textbook to be different was its perspective. Most British school textbooks, if they cover the Empire at all, tell its story through the eyes of the British – they are its ‘main characters’. The people who were most impacted by colonisation are barely mentioned, or when they are, it is on the periphery of the narrative.

The book itself! (Please note that Rich’s cat, Lyra, is not included in the purchase of a standard edition.)

A New Focus on the British Empire

For example, the story of the Mayflower colonists who sailed to America in 1620 will begin with a group of Puritans in Scrooby, Lincolnshire, wanting religious freedom, and end with the establishment of the colony. We wanted to turn this narrative around as much as possible. We try to tell the story of the Plymouth colony from the perspective of the Wampanoag people – individuals such as Tisquantum and Metacomet, who were forced by the arrival of the colonists to make huge decisions.

This flipped perspective is something we have tried to maintain throughout the book.

Why did you want to write a school textbook about the British Empire?
We both had school history educations that largely neglected colonial history – an experience shared by many people who grew up in the UK and something we are hoping to redress with this book.

Tom

Studying at Bristol in the early 2000s was the first meaningful exposure both of us had to colonial history. It suddenly seemed to connect so many previously disparate bits of history, from economic development in Europe to changing ideas on race. At that time the University had a partnership with the (now defunct) British Empire and Commonwealth Museum by Temple Meads, and we had access to the fascinating collections there.

In 2020 we were both living in Bristol when Colston’s statue came down. This prompted us to rethink the way that we taught about Bristol’s role in transatlantic enslavement. It was lockdown, and we channelled our energies into working with a group of Bristol teachers on a textbook (Bristol and Transatlantic Slavery, published by Bristol Museums). A key part of this writing experience was the input we had from Bristol historians such as Richard Stone and Madge Dresser. It left us thinking that there was more important colonial history to get into schools – and that working closely with academics would yield really good things.

Rich

What is the importance of the British Empire today?
It’s completely impossible for young people to understand the world today without an understanding of the British Empire. From the borders on maps, to climate change, to migration and even food and drink – its legacy is everywhere.

What advice would you give to a student interested in getting into teaching?
Tom: Teaching is in a bit of a dire state at the moment but it’s a wonderfully rewarding job. You can make a genuine difference – plus it can take you on all sorts of adventures.

Rich: Honestly it is the best job, especially being a history teacher. I get to teach kids about a huge variety of topics giving me a great opportunity to top up my own knowledge at the same time.

What’s the best advice you ever got about history?
Rich: anything that Ronald Hutton has ever said to me is the best thing I’ve ever heard about history.

Tom: I agree with this. Every sentence of Ronald’s lectures was like a shimmering gem to be treasured. I also really appreciated Richard Sheldon’s lectures on the philosophy of history. That was the first time I felt as though I understood how history actually works.

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve read in the last twelve months?
Tom: The Soviet Century: Archaeology of a Lost World by Karl Schlögel. It’s a new book by a German historian, who uses the methodology of archaeology to recreate the ‘lifeworld’ of the USSR. He goes into great detail about material objects such as wrapping paper and the doorbells of communal apartments. It’s completely fascinating historical worldbuilding.

Rich: The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown by Anna Keay. It’s a topic I knew very little about, but the way that Keay crafts a narrative around individuals is a masterpiece. It feels like gripping fiction.

If you had a time machine, where and when would you most want to go?
Rich: The 1780s. The modern world is truly beginning and the globe is changing. I’d love to see that. This is one of our favourite pub conversations.

Tom: Agree (we’ve discussed this before, at length). The difficulty would be in deciding where you go. Meeting Olaudah Equiano in London or listening to Mozart in Vienna would be pretty exciting. Or it would be horribly fascinating to see the First Fleet arrive in Sydney Harbour or the Storming of the Bastille.

Falafel King or Eat a Pitta?
Rich: Eat a Pitta is better. I hate to say this as nostalgia makes me want to say the King, but Eat is better. My current favourite place is Pizza Bianchi though.

Tom: This is where Rich and I disagree. Sitting outside Arnolfini with your legs dangling over the edge of the harbour eating a Falafel King is as good as it gets. But the best thing I ever ate in Bristol was the marinated aubergine at Caribbean Croft.

What are you working on next?
Fingers crossed: we want to start a series of textbooks focusing on individual centuries, but zoomed out with a global perspective.

Richard Kennett is an assistant headteacher in Bristol at Ashton Park and Redland Green where he focuses on curriculum and assessment. More importantly though he is a history teacher and fellow of the Historical Association. He graduated from the University of Bristol in 2003 and writes history textbooks in his spare time.

Tom Allen graduated from the University of Bristol in 2004. He is also a history teacher and textbook author. He has worked in schools in West Yorkshire, Australia, and Bath, and currently teaches at an international school in Munich. In September he will return to Bristol as Head of History at Merchants’ Academy in Withywood, a school sponsored by the University of Bristol.

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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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.

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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In the latest in our running series on historians in the department, we hear from Vivian Kong, Lecturer in Modern Chinese History. Her research to date has focused largely on interwar Hong Kong, especially on how the city’s global connections and multiethnic urban setting shaped the identity politics and social dynamics there.  Continue reading →

Sarah Jones is Lecturer in Modern British History. She is a social and cultural historian, and most of her work looks at themes around gender, sexuality, and the history of science and medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her current research looks really closely at print culture, thinking about how the public engaged with scientific ideas about sex through magazines, advice texts, and the news.

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Charli Veale is a recent graduate from the University, having completed her BA in History earlier this year (2020).

Hi Charli. First of all, thanks for making the time to talk to us. Could you start by telling us a little bit about what you are up to now?

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