-
Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan
Article
The 1980s are often viewed as marking the repudiation of the political order marked by the New Deal and the 1960s, both periods of enormous social, political, and cultural change. Yet the decade symbolised by President Ronald Reagan, far from being a period of triumphant conservative counterrevolution, was a period...
Recorded Webinar: Resisting Reagan
-
Recorded webinar: A revolution denied? Gender, sexuality and feminism in modern Britain, 1945-the present
Article
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...
Recorded webinar: A revolution denied? Gender, sexuality and feminism in modern Britain, 1945-the present
-
Virtual Branch Recording: The Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949
Diaries and Personal Experiences
In this talk Professor Henrietta Harrison uses diary records to think about the experience of living through the revolution in China in 1949, focussing on what it meant to Chinese people, how they learned about its practices and ideology, and how this changed their lives - whether they were radical intellectuals returning...
Virtual Branch Recording: The Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949
-
Recorded Webinar: Robespierre and Danton: Heroes of the French Revolution?
Article
One of the oldest myths of the French Revolution is the lethal rivalry between Robespierre and Danton: Robespierre the cold, bloodthirsty dictator who ruled France through Terror, versus Danton, the warm, humane, inspirational orator who wanted to stop Terror. Throughout the 19th century Robespierre was mostly depicted as a villain,...
Recorded Webinar: Robespierre and Danton: Heroes of the French Revolution?
-
Virtual Branch recording: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom
The Black Crown
How did a man born enslaved on a plantation triumph over Napoleon's invading troops and become king of the first free black nation in the Americas? This is the forgotten, remarkable story of Henry Christophe. Christophe fought as a child soldier in the American War of Independence, before serving in...
Virtual Branch recording: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom
-
Filmed Lecture: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution
A Fistful of Shells
In this Virtual Branch webinar we were joined in conversation with Dr Toby Green on his acclaimed book 'A Fistful of Shells'. Shortlisted for the 2020 Wolfson Prize and winner of the 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, the book explores West Africa from the Rise of the...
Filmed Lecture: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution
-
Recorded Webinar: Understanding Lenin’s Government, 1917-24
Article
In this webinar Dr Douds examines the nature of political authority in the nascent Soviet Republic and the institutional structures, practices and ideology of government in the Lenin period. She considers how Communist Party dictatorship and the monolithic party-state emerged in the early years following the October Revolution of 1917...
Recorded Webinar: Understanding Lenin’s Government, 1917-24
-
Recorded webinar: Britain's eighteenth-century tradition of popular riot and protest
Article
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...
Recorded webinar: Britain's eighteenth-century tradition of popular riot and protest
-
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
-
The Origins of Mass Society: Speech, Sex and Drink in Urbanising Britain, 1780-1870
Virtual Branch Lecture Recording
Professor Peter Mandler is the current president of the Historical Association. As part of our 'presidents season' for the HA Virtual Branch he gave a fascinating talk on The Origins of Mass Society: Speech, Sex and Drink in Urbanising Britain, 1780-1870.
In this talk he explores the impact of the changes in...
The Origins of Mass Society: Speech, Sex and Drink in Urbanising Britain, 1780-1870
-
Virtual Branch Recording: Henry III and Simon de Montfort
Article
David Carpenter brings to life the dramatic events in the last phase of Henry III’s momentous reign, provides a fresh account of the king’s strenuous efforts to recover power and sheds new light on the rebel figure Simon de Montfort.
Professor David Carpenter is a Professor of Medieval History at King's College...
Virtual Branch Recording: Henry III and Simon de Montfort
-
Virtual Branch Recording: Magna Carta
Article
This month at the Virtual Branch, renowned medieval historian David Carpenter will delve into the enduring legacy of Magna Carta. Drawing on his recent work uncovering and authenticating a Magna Carta document in the United States, Carpenter will explore why both the dating and the content of this foundational charter...
Virtual Branch Recording: Magna Carta
-
Recorded webinar series: The power of maps
Multipage Article
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...
Recorded webinar series: The power of maps
-
Recorded webinar: Apartheid in global context: transnational dimensions of South Africa’s racial state
Article
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...
Recorded webinar: Apartheid in global context: transnational dimensions of South Africa’s racial state
-
Recorded webinar: The Crusades through Middle Eastern eyes: Islamic and Eastern Christian perspectives
Article
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...
Recorded webinar: The Crusades through Middle Eastern eyes: Islamic and Eastern Christian perspectives
-
Recorded webinar: Deafness in early modern England
Article
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...
Recorded webinar: Deafness in early modern England
-
Recorded webinar: Tsarist imperial society and ethnicity
Article
In this webinar historian Shane O’Rourke – a specialist in late-Imperial Russian society and ethnicities, including the Cossacks – explores society under the last three Tsars, examining Russification in the western Russian borderlands, Russian settler colonialism, the Caucasus and deportation, and current historiographical trends.
Recorded webinar: Tsarist imperial society and ethnicity
-
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
-
Recorded webinar: Using 'One Day' to explore the actions that helped to lead to the Holocaust and actions of genocide
HA Webinar
This year's Holocaust Memorial Day the theme is 'One Day'. In this webinar with historian Paula Kitching, we will use the one day Wannsee Conference of January 1942 to help explore the actions of the perpetrators, the Holocaust victims and how decision making by people can lead to genocide.
This...
Recorded webinar: Using 'One Day' to explore the actions that helped to lead to the Holocaust and actions of genocide
-
Film: What a strange place to be buried
Virtual Branch Film
Anna Cusack joined the HA Virtual Branch to discuss unique burial locations in London c.1600-1800. Anna recently completed a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London on the marginal dead of seventeenth and eighteenth-century London, focusing specifically on suicides, executed criminals, Quakers, and Jews and the treatment of their bodily remains...
Film: What a strange place to be buried
-
Film: The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania (1772-1795)
Repercussions for German-Polish Relations and their Legacy.
Karin Friedrich recently joined the Virtual Branch to discuss aspects of its complex history in her talk on the partitions of Poland, their repercussions for German-Polish relations and their legacy. Professor Friedrich is chair in Early Modern European History at the University of Aberdeen, co-director of the Centre for Early Modern...
Film: The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania (1772-1795)
-
Recorded webinar: Exploring representations and attitudes to disability across history
Webinar
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...
Recorded webinar: Exploring representations and attitudes to disability across history
-
Virtual Branch Recording: Assassins and Templars
Article
In this talk, Steve Tibble discusses the Assassins and Templars, two of history's most legendary groups.
One was a Shi’ite religious sect, the other a Christian military order created to defend the Holy Land. Steve Tibble traces the history of these two groups from their origins to their ultimate destruction showing how they survived...
Virtual Branch Recording: Assassins and Templars
-
Recorded webinar: The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians at the time of Fascism
Article
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...
Recorded webinar: The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians at the time of Fascism
-
Recorded webinar: Revisiting the witch trials
Article
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...
Recorded webinar: Revisiting the witch trials
