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Film series: The African-American Civil Rights Movement
Film: An introduction to the African-American Civil Rights Movement
The US civil rights battles of the latter half of the twentieth century are a common part of popular culture - and yet the detail is often overlooked in favour of the headlines. It is a positive step that so many of us now know the names of Rosa Parks...
Film series: The African-American Civil Rights Movement
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Recorded webinar: Untold Stories of D-Day
Webinar
The HA has worked with film-maker, historian and Legasee ambassador Martyn Cox on a series of webinars looking at untold stories from the Second World War. Many of these stories are taken for the oral histories provided in interviews given to Martyn on film.
In this filmed webinar, Martyn goes...
Recorded webinar: Untold Stories of D-Day
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Virtual Branch Recording: Locating and Mapping the Jews of Medieval Lincoln
Article
As part of a project to identify and write biographies of all of the Jews of the medieval Lincoln Jewry, Natasha Jenman, Luka Liu, and Josh Outhwaite have been working on records of Jewish property ownership in the city across the thirteenth century. This allows them to identify those individuals who will be...
Virtual Branch Recording: Locating and Mapping the Jews of Medieval Lincoln
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Virtual Branch Recording: The Fall of the English Republic
Article
Oliver Cromwell’s death in 1658 sparked a period of unrivalled turmoil and confusion in English history. In less than two years, there were close to ten changes of government; rival armies of Englishmen faced each other across the Scottish border; and the Long Parliament was finally dissolved after two decades.
Why...
Virtual Branch Recording: The Fall of the English Republic
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Virtual Branch Recording: Humans
The 300,000 year struggle for equality
In this Virtual Branch talk, Dr Alvin Finkel challenges claims that egalitarian, peaceful societies disappeared with the founding of agriculture or with the founding of state-level social organisation.
Different authors have suggested that early human society was essentially egalitarian in nature, with hierarchies only later becoming common. The point at which...
Virtual Branch Recording: Humans
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Virtual Branch Recording: Vagabonds versus the Mendicity Society
Article
Red Lion Square was long one of London's most genteel addresses, home to nobles, scholars, and professionals. But on 25 March 1818, one house on the south side opened its doors to quite another class of person, as the Mendicity Society began its business. Set up to solve the growing...
Virtual Branch Recording: Vagabonds versus the Mendicity Society
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Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
Article
Professor Jan Rüger joined the Virtual Branch on 9th February 2023 to talk about his book Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea, tracing a rich history of contact and conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to the Cold War.
For generations this North Sea island expressed a German...
Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea
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Film: Medlicott Lecture 2024 - Professor Catherine Hall
Article
The Medlicott Medal is awarded annually for outstanding services and contributions to history. This year the Medal went to Professor Catherine Hall, who is Emerita Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London. Professor Hall has a long-established academic record in feminist history and empire and post-colonial history. She was a...
Film: Medlicott Lecture 2024 - Professor Catherine Hall
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Virtual Branch Recording: The House of Dudley
Article
The Dudleys thrived at the court of Henry VII, but were sacrificed to the popularity of Henry VIII. Rising to prominence in the reign of Edward VI, the Dudleys lost it all by advancing Jane Grey to the throne over Mary I. That was until the reign of Elizabeth I,...
Virtual Branch Recording: The House of Dudley
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Film: Medlicott Lecture 2023 - Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch
Article
The Medlicott Medal is awarded annually for outstanding services and contributions to history. This year the Medal went to renowned historian and author Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch who is currently Professor of the Church at Oxford. His 2008 book History of Christianity: the first three thousand years is the leading authority on the history...
Film: Medlicott Lecture 2023 - Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch
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Recorded Webinar: Mass-Observing Modern Britain
Article
Mass-Observation is probably the most consistently useful source for the study of mid and late 20th social lives Britain. It was established in 1937 with the aim of investigating ordinary life and developing an 'anthropology of ourselves.' It used a range of different methods to collect information, from recording overheard...
Recorded Webinar: Mass-Observing Modern Britain
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Film: A short history of Islamic thought
Article
In his book of the same name, A short history of Islamic thought, Dr Fitzroy Morrissey provides a concise introduction to the origins and sources of Islamic thought, from its beginnings in the 7th century to the current moment.
In this talk he explores the major ideas and introduces the...
Film: A short history of Islamic thought
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Film: Berengaria of Navarre
History & Myth
In this talk Dr Gabrielle Storey discusses the life and times of Berengaria of Navarre, queen of England, lord of Le Mans, and wife of Richard I.
Berengaria of Navarre has been inaccurately labelled as the only queen never to have stepped foot in England. This talk will present new analysis...
Film: Berengaria of Navarre
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Film: Rome in the world/the world in Rome with Dr Lucy Donkin
Article
In-person tickets to HA Annual Conference 2023 are now limited but you can still book for an incredible virtual programme. To give you a taster of the fantastic sessions on offer, we've published one of the sessions from last year's HA Conference on Rome in the world/the world in Rome with...
Film: Rome in the world/the world in Rome with Dr Lucy Donkin
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Recorded Webinar: Nineteenth-century crime and punishment
Article
This webinar with Dr Emma D Watkins explores the changing understanding of crime and responses to it in the nineteenth-century. It provides a brief overview on the general shift from punishment of the body, to banishment, all the way through to imprisonment.
With a particular emphasis on the use of...
Recorded Webinar: Nineteenth-century crime and punishment
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Recorded webinar: Maya ruler King Pakal II of Palenque
‘A veritable Tutankhamun of the New World’
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...
Recorded webinar: Maya ruler King Pakal II of Palenque
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Film: Building Anglo-Saxon England
Article
Building Anglo-Saxon England demonstrates how recent excavations enable us to grasp for the first time the diversity of the Anglo-Saxon built environment. The book explores how the natural landscape was modified for human activity, and how settlements were laid out with geometrical precision by specialist surveyors. It also shows how...
Film: Building Anglo-Saxon England
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Film: Death in the Diaspora
British & Irish Gravestones
As British and Irish migrants sought new lives in the Caribbean, Asia, North America and Australasia, they left a trail of physical remains where settlement occurred. Between the 17th and 20th centuries, gravestones and elaborate epitaphs documented identity and attachment to both their old and new worlds.
In this Virtual...
Film: Death in the Diaspora
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Film: The Ruin of All Witches
Life and Death in the New World
Professor Malcom Gaskill joined the HA Virtual Branch on Thursday 10th December 2022 to discuss the subject of his book, The Ruin of all Witches, Life and Death in the New World, which was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2022. His research explores the attitudes, beliefs and treatment of people as...
Film: The Ruin of All Witches
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Recorded Webinar: ‘Drawing the Line’: the 1947 Partition of India
Article
August 2022 marks 75 years since British India was divided at independence into two separate states: India and Pakistan (the latter including today’s Bangladesh). As with the 70th commemoration in 2017, this anniversary will trigger a great deal of collective remembering in Britain just as in South Asia itself.
Freedom from...
Recorded Webinar: ‘Drawing the Line’: the 1947 Partition of India
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Film: Rethinking the origins of the Cold War
Churchill's Great Game
In this HA Virtual Branch talk Professor Richard Toye explores Churchill’s response to the USSR and how his actions during the early Cold War years intersected with his views of traditional Anglo-Russian tensions and the legacy of the ‘Great Game’.
Richard Toye is Professor of Modern History at the University...
Film: Rethinking the origins of the Cold War
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Film: The ladies-in-waiting who served the six wives of Henry VIII
Virtual Branch
Every queen had ladies-in-waiting. Her confidantes and chaperones, they are the forgotten agents of the Tudor court. Experts at survival, negotiating the competing demands of their families and their queen, the ladies-in-waiting of Henry VIII’s wives were far more than decorative ‘extras’: they were serious political players who changed the...
Film: The ladies-in-waiting who served the six wives of Henry VIII
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Film: Medlicott Lecture 2022 - David Olusoga
Article
This talk was presented at the Historical Association Awards evening, 7 July 2022. The talk is by Professor David Olusoga on the evening that he received the HA Medlicott Medal for Outstanding contributions to History. It is not to be used for any purpose or publicly reported on without the...
Film: Medlicott Lecture 2022 - David Olusoga
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Film: Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe
Virtual Branch Lecture Recording
Ravenna was the capital of the Western Roman Empire from 402 CE until 751 CE, then later, the capital of the immense kingdom of Theoderic the Goth and finally the centre of Byzantine power in Italy. In this talk Professor Judith Herrin explores the history of the city, its peoples...
Film: Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe
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Film: A Jewish Divorce Case in Medieval England
Virtual Branch
In 1242, the prominent thirteenth-century Jewish financier David of Oxford attempted to divorce his wife, Muriel. In the process, he met with a number of obstacles which seriously hampered his efforts and had far-reaching implications for the Jewish community as a whole. In the end, David had to appeal directly...
Film: A Jewish Divorce Case in Medieval England