To mark the anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s first folio in 1623–24, our 2024 winter webinar series focused on ‘The history that Shakespeare gave us’. The representation of the past in Shakespeare’s plays has shaped many people’s understanding of history. In this webinar series, leading academics explore the history that is...

Historians use maps a lot – or at least they should. They help us to understand global relations, environmental and social change and they help to reveal how the world was understood and explored in the past. This webinar series is an opportunity to hear three world class academics explore different aspects...

Since the end of the Second World War, there has been much talk of 'revolutions' in gender relationships and sexual behaviour. Many observers have pointed to significant increases in women's participation in politics and paid employment, of new sexual identities and the emergence of a more sexually expressive culture, and...

While often viewed as a pariah state existing in isolation, the apartheid project was deeply entwined with global shifts in the 20th century. This webinar explores how international ideologies, Cold War geopolitics, and global anti-apartheid movements both challenged and inadvertently shaped the South African state. By contextualising apartheid within a...

In this webinar, Professor Robbie Aitken looks at the experiences of Black residents in Germany during the Nazi period. Why have they been largely written out of larger histories of the Third Reich? Professor Aitken suggests that there was a genocidal intent in Nazi policy towards them, signalled partly by...

Eighteenth-century Britons were ruled by a restricted oligarchy of landowners and plutocrats. Yet the wider population had a proud tradition of assertiveness and readiness to protest. ‘Britons never will be slaves!’ as the chorus of 'Rule Britannia' (1740) announced pointedly (if somewhat ironically, in view of Britain’s role in the...

In this webinar, Professor Rosamund Oates shares her research for her new book Silent Histories: Deafness in Early Modern England (2026). Professor Oates is an expert in the historical cultures of early modern England and is passionate about exploring previously unknown stories of deaf and disabled people, using rigorous scholarly...

This webinar was presented by Richard Rieser, who is a campaigner and champion for disability rights and the coordinator of UK Disability History Month. His presentation is part of our ongoing work to explore disability history and the arguments and representations of it and ensure that people from disability groups...

During his lifetime, Henry VIII journeyed throughout his kingdom in what are known as royal 'progresses'. In this webinar, Anthony Musson will share research from the AHRC-funded 'Henry on Tour' project which seeks to reassess these progresses by exploring archival sources, archaeology, music and material culture. In addition to contributing...

Between 1917 and 1947, women in the Indian subcontinent were engaged in active debates and noteworthy demonstrations for the vote, building up a national suffrage movement. In this talk Professor Sumita Mukherjee discusses the activities of Indian suffragettes in this period, showing how they were connected with British and other...

Would US President John F. Kennedy have avoided the catastrophe that became the Vietnam War if Lee Harvey Oswald had not assassinated him in Dallas on that fateful day of 22 November 1963? This question – or a version of it – has animated discussions of the Vietnam War for...

The discovery in 1952 of the tomb of King Pakal II of Palenque has been called the most important archaeological find in the history of the Americas. Protected by a magnificently sculpted stone sarcophagus depicting Pakal’s descent to the underworld and re-birth as the maize god lay the body of...

Modern, non-invasive scientific techniques have revolutionised knowledge of medieval inks and pigments - from the most exotic, such as lapis lazuli and Egyptian blue, to the most ordinary, indigo and ochres - and of how they were used to create magnificent illuminated manuscripts. This webinar will outline the techniques in question,...

Natural disasters frequently affected medieval populations. This webinar explores some examples of what happened when meteorological hazards struck medieval communities, how they reacted and what steps they took to protect themselves against future risks. Through archaeological and historical sources of evidence, Peter Brown explores the diverse impacts unleashed by disasters...

To choose to act, to have no choice to be who you are, to live an ordinary life in extraordinary times? These are all questions that the Holocaust raises. Millions of people became victims of the Nazis, millions more choose not to act to stop the events around them, felt...

The East Anglian witch hunt under Matthew Hopkins, self-appointed Witchfinder General, has garnered a great deal of popular and historical interest over the years. An image has developed of a zealous, misogynistic young man serving crazed 'justice' against supposed witches, whipping up panic and turning neighbours against each other in...

Professor Julie Gottlieb has written extensively on inter-war British political and gender history, and her more recent work has provided alternative perspectives on seemingly settled debates in the historiography of British foreign policy and the history of appeasement. Through the lens of women/gender, social history, and now psychology/emotion, she argues for a...

The Crusades were traditionally studied as an extension of western European history. In recent decades, however, historians have begun to study the Crusades from the perspective of Middle Eastern history, through sources left behind by local Muslims as well as Eastern Christians. This presentation will discuss this shift in the...

The Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini understood more than other leaders of his generation the power of images and used them to great effect in building his personality cult which was central to Italian Fascism. In this illustrated webinar, Professor Giuliana Pieri will explore the evolution of the iconography of...