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Recorded webinar: Mapping uncertainty - Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
Retracing the trajectories of young survivors in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust
Recorded webinar: Mapping uncertainty - Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
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Virtual Branch Recording: The First King of England
Article
Æthelstan was the early medieval king whose territorial conquests and shrewd statesmanship united the peoples, languages, and cultures that would come to be known as the 'Kingdom of the English.' In this panoramic talk, David Woodman draws on his research and recent book to create a portrait of this immensely...
Virtual Branch Recording: The First King of England
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Films: Mikhail Gorbachev – Interpretations
Film series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
How much of what Russia is today, how its people behave, and how they are perceived is dependent on its history and those that have led it? Was it the first melting pot of the world? Do its broad range of cultural traditions and diversity play a part in its...
Films: Mikhail Gorbachev – Interpretations
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Living on the Silk Roads: Voices from Dunhuang
Historian article
In Autumn 2024, the British Library will mount an exhibition exploring the stories of the people who inhabited or passed through the oasis town of Dunhuang during the first millennium. Located in modern-day Gansu province, in northwest China, Dunhuang was originally established as a garrison town and became an important commercial...
Living on the Silk Roads: Voices from Dunhuang
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Film series: Power and Freedom in Britain and Ireland, 1714–2010
New HA film series
From royal courts to radical protests, from industrial revolutions to global empires – this compelling new film series traces the dramatic evolution of power, rights, and freedom across three centuries of British and Irish history.
We will trace Britain and Ireland’s transformation from 1714 to 2010, unpacking power struggles, social revolutions, and...
Film series: Power and Freedom in Britain and Ireland, 1714–2010
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Virtual Branch Recording: Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife
Lives of medieval women
What was life really like for women in the medieval period? How did they think about sex, death and God? Could they live independent lives?
Few women had the luxury of writing down their thoughts and feelings during medieval times. But remarkably, there are at least four who did: Marie de France,...
Virtual Branch Recording: Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife
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Virtual Branch Recording: Food and drink in the medieval monastery
Article
In his recent book The Monastic World, Andrew Jotischky looks at how from the late Roman Empire onwards, monasteries and convents were a common sight throughout Europe. The history of monasticism is defined by the fierce and passionate abandonment of the ordinary comforts of life, the most striking being food and drink....
Virtual Branch Recording: Food and drink in the medieval monastery
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Virtual Branch Recording: Women and the Reformations
Article
The Reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, have long been told as stories of men. But women were central to the transformations that took place in Europe and beyond. What was life like for them in this turbulent period? How did their actions and ideas shape Christianity and influence societies around the world? ...
Virtual Branch Recording: Women and the Reformations
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Virtual Branch Recording: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World
Article
This talk explored the struggle for liberation from the perspective of the enslaved, wherever possible in their own words. Dr Sudhir Hazareesingh shines a light on the lives of revolutionaries like Toussaint Louverture, José Antonio Aponte, Nat Turner, and the pregnant rebel Solitude; touching on the stories of the freed...
Virtual Branch Recording: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World
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Recorded webinar: Ordinary people - Holocaust Memorial Day 2023
Recorded webinar
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...
Recorded webinar: Ordinary people - Holocaust Memorial Day 2023
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Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2022 by David Olusoga
Article
Professor David Olusoga is a revered TV historian, a writer and a practising academic at Manchester University. In 2022 he was the recipient of the Historical Association's annual Medlicott medal, awarded for outstanding contributions to history.
The recipient of the medal provides the closing lecture of the HA's annual awards evening. Professor...
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2022 by David Olusoga
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Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2021 - Rana Mitter
How new is Asia’s ‘new era’?
The 2021 Medlicott Medal recipient was Professor Rana Mitter, expert on Modern Chinese history and politics. Professor Mitter's Medlicott lecture was on the subject of ‘How New is Asia’s “new era”?’.
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2021 - Rana Mitter
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In conversation with Henrike Lähnemann
Historian feature
In The Life of Nuns: love, politics, and religion in medieval German convents (Open Book Publishers, 2024), Henrike Lähnemann and Eva Schlotheuber explore female religious communities from the late medieval and early Reformation-era in northern Germany, revealing them to be vibrant centres of learning, administration, devotion, friendship, and negotiation. The book challenges...
In conversation with Henrike Lähnemann
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Film: Proto-feminism in Britain and Ireland – 1714 to 1785
Power and Freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714–2010
In Episode 11, Dr Mary Jo MacDonald of the University of Jyväskylä explores how the end of the Licensing Act, sweeping political change, and a revolution in intellectual culture opened unprecedented opportunities for women to shape political, social, and intellectual life in Britain and Ireland. The film highlights major proto‑feminist thinkers...
Film: Proto-feminism in Britain and Ireland – 1714 to 1785
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Doing history: Remembering the Wars of the Roses
Historian feature
This article examines how the Wars of the Roses have been remembered through memorials and presents the Battlefields Trust’s Wars of the Roses Memorial Database Project, launched in 2023. The open-access, crowd-sourced database maps monuments, plaques, battlefield markers and local commemorations linked to the conflicts. David Grummitt shows that remembrance...
Doing history: Remembering the Wars of the Roses
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Film: Queer British History – 1714 to 1785
Film Series: Power and freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714-2010
In episode 10, Dr Declan Kavanagh (University of Kent), reflects on Queer British history 1714-1785. Dr Kavanagh looks at the history of the language of LGBTQ+, in particular the term ‘queer’ in its very recent usage and how the language of descriptors for these communities has been influenced. Dr Kavanagh draws...
Film: Queer British History – 1714 to 1785
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Ffilm: Grym a Phrotest yng Nghymru – 1714 i 1785
Article
Ym Mhennod 9, mae Dr Eryn White (Prifysgol Aberystwyth) yn trafod pwy oedd mewn grym yng Nghymru ym 1714, y berthynas newidiol rhwng Cymru a'r Deyrnas Unedig ehangach a'r datblygiadau allweddol a ddigwyddodd yng Nghymru rhwng 1714-1785.
Mae Dr White yn myfyrio ar ehangu cyflym print a llythrennedd yng Nghymru...
Ffilm: Grym a Phrotest yng Nghymru – 1714 i 1785
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Film: Power and Protest in Wales – 1714 to 1785
Film Series: Power and freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714-2010
In Episode 9, Dr Eryn White (Aberystwyth University) discusses who had power in Wales in 1714, the changing relationship between Wales and the wider United Kingdom and the key developments that took place in Wales between 1714-1785.
Dr White reflects upon the rapid expansion of print and literacy in Wales...
Film: Power and Protest in Wales – 1714 to 1785
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Film: Power and Protest in Scotland – 1714 to 1785
Film Series: Power and freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714-2010
In Episode 9, Professor Alison Cathcart (University of Stirling) discusses who held power in Scotland in 1714 and how the Union with England, together with the arrival of the Hanoverian dynasty, transformed the nation. She examines the central role of the Church of Scotland, the influence of the Royal Burghs,...
Film: Power and Protest in Scotland – 1714 to 1785
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In conversation with Elizabeth King
Historian feature
Elizabeth King’s Miracles and Machines (2023) is a vivid, searching account of a small sixteenth-century automaton – a robed figure, nicknamed ‘the monk’ – that walks, beats its breast, turns its head, and appears to pray. Co-authored with clockmaker David Todd, the book is at once a material history of an extraordinary...
In conversation with Elizabeth King
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Film: Disability in Britain and Ireland – 1714 to 1785
Film Series: Power and freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714-2010
In Episode 6, Dr Declan Kavanagh (University of Kent) discusses the development of ideas around, and responses to, disability in Britain and Ireland in the 18th century.
Dr Kavanagh examines the definition given in Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary in 1755 and looks at the medical and charity models of responding to disability...
Film: Disability in Britain and Ireland – 1714 to 1785
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Film: Power and Protest in England – 1714 to 1785
Film Series: Power and freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714-2010
In Episode 7, Professor Carl Griffin (University of Sussex) discusses the changing landscape of England as enclosure accelerates, transforming the social dynamics of the countryside as peasants become wage labourers and their rights to use the ‘common land’ is diminished.
Professor Griffin reflects on this period of protest over enclosure,...
Film: Power and Protest in England – 1714 to 1785
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Film: Finance in Britain and Ireland: 1714 to 1785
Film Series: Power and freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714-2010
In Episode 5, Professor Anne Murphy (University of Portsmouth) examines the development of finance in Britain and Ireland, from the emergence of the Bank of England during the Nine Years’ War into a system that would facilitate the growth of the British Empire and Britain’s Industrial Revolution.
During this period...
Film: Finance in Britain and Ireland: 1714 to 1785
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Film: Black British History – 1714 to 1785
Power and Freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714–2010
In Episode 4, Dr Montaz Marché (University College London) and Professor Ryan Hanley (University of Exeter), discuss the lives and experience of 18th century Black Britons.
In this discussion they look at the lives of both the exceptional and the ordinary, and reflect upon the politics of race and gender in...
Film: Black British History – 1714 to 1785
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Film: Economic and social change – 1714 to 1785
Power and Freedom in Britain and Ireland: 1714–2010
The 18th century represents a pivotal moment bridging early modern Britain with the social, economic and technological transformations of the Industrial Revolution.
In Episode 3, Professor Emma Griffin (Queen Mary University of London), explores this period of invention, innovation and entrepreneurialism, how it affected ordinary families, and its role in the...
Film: Economic and social change – 1714 to 1785
