Seminar: ‘Occupations and Professions in British and Irish History’, 5 March 2014

A key purpose of the British and Irish Research Group is to encourage and support members in the advancement of their research projects. This seminar will showcase the work of three members of the History department and provide a forum for discussion. The formal papers will be followed by a general planning session for the Group’s activities in 2014-15. Everyone is welcome to attend; feel free to come for only part, or all, of the event. For further information see the British and Irish History Research Group’s website.

Time: 2:00 – 4:00pm
Venue: Open University Milton Keynes Campus, Faculty of Arts, Meeting Rooms 1 and 2, Wilson A Ground floor

 

Managing Heritage, Making Peace: History, Identity and Memory in Contemporary Kenya

Managing HeritageLotte Hughes, Annie E Coombes and Karega-Munene have just published Managing Heritage, Making Peace: History, Identity and Memory in Contemporary Kenya (I.B. Tauris 2013).  Kenya stands at a crossroads in its history and heritage, as the nation celebrates its fiftieth anniversary of independence from Britain in 2013.

At this important juncture, what parts of its history, including the Mau Mau uprising, do citizens and state wish to remember and commemorate and what is best forgotten or occluded? What does heritage mean to ordinary Kenyans, and what role does it play in building nationhood and forging peace and reconciliation?  Find out more about this book.

 

New Publication: Health and Wellness in the 19th Century

health and wellnessDeborah Brunton’s book Health and Wellness in the 19th Century (Greenwood, 2013) has just been published.

The book explores medical ideas and practice in the 19th century around the world, this book showcases the wide range of medical ideas, practices, institutions, and patient experiences, revealing how the exchanges of ideas and therapies between different systems of medicine resulted in patients enjoying a surprising degree of choice. The work provides an introduction to 19th-century medicine and sets the advancement of medicine within the context of wider historical changes. Chapters examine areas of dramatic change, such as the development of surgery, as well as the fundamental continuities in the use of traditional forms of supernatural healing, covering western, Chinese, unani, ayurvedic, and folk medicine-based understandings of the body and disease. Additionally, the book describes how the culture of medicine reflected and responded to the challenges posed by urbanization, industrialization, and global movement. Find out more.

 

New Publication: Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry

anglo-american connectionsYoshi Kikuchi, a former research student of the Department of History of Science, Technology and Medicine, has published a new book partly based on his PhD thesis on Anglo-Japanese relations in chemistry submitted to the OU in 2006.

Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry: The Lab as Contact Zone (Palgrave Macmillan) also draws on his postdoctoral research on American-Japanese relations at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (Philadelphia), MIT and Harvard University.

The book analyses the dynamic cross-cultural interplay between British and American chemists and their Japanese students in a variety of “contact zones” in three continents and its consequences for the institutionalization of scientific and technological higher education in Japan in the late nineteenth and twentieth century.  Find out more about this book.

 

New publication: Between Yesterday and Tomorrow

Bailey Book CoverChristian Bailey’s new book Between Yesterday and Tomorrow: German Visions of Europe, 1926-1950 seeks to understand how Germans became such ‘good Europeans’ after 1945. Whereas many histories of European integration tend to largely focus on the diplomatic goings-on between elites, this book focuses on how support for a united Europe was cultivated in civil society. It asks if, and how, incorporating West Germany into an integrated Europe helped to democratize German political culture and to establish the new state as a reliable member of the Western bloc during the Cold War era. Find out more about this book.

 

New Publication: The Cooke Sisters

cookesistersDr Gemma Allen’s new book, The Cooke Sisters: Education, Piety and Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester University Press), has just been published. Part of the select group of Tudor women allowed access to a formal education, the Cooke sisters were also well-connected through their marriages to influential Elizabethan politicians.

Drawing particularly on their own writings, this book reconstructs for the first time the sisters’ humanist education and reveals the extent of their religious and political agency.

 

Karl Hack on Channel News Asia

Dr Karl Hack was interviewed live for Channel News Asia on 16 September 2013, on the death of Asia’s longest serving head of a communist party, Chin Peng. Chin Peng died that day aged 88, having led the Malayan Communist Party since 1947, and Dr Hack had met him in 1999 and co-edited a book of dialogies between him and historians.

 

Seminar: Criminal Justice History, 12 July 2013

We are holding the next seminar in our criminal justice history series on Friday July 12th, at the Open University’s campus, Walton Hall, in Milton Keynes. The speakers are all researchers who have conducted, or are in the process of conducting, ground-breaking research into the criminal justice systems of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Programme
10.30: Open, Tea, coffee, biscuits.
11.00: Bob Love (University of Leicester) ‘Somerset before the police – policing the county 1830 – 1856’
12.00: Elaine Saunders (Open University) ‘Policing a rural county: eighteenth-century systems of policing in Hertfordshire’
13.00: Lunch
14.00: Dr. Francis Boorman (University of London) ‘The spatiality of policing, crime and disorder in Chancery Lane, c.1760-1815’.
15.00: Dr. Dave Churchill (University of Leicester) ‘The police and the public in Leeds, 1850-1900: the contexts and content of popular animosity’
16.00: Close

If you would like to attend, please could you register by contacting Yvonne Bartley (y.s.bartley@open.ac.uk)? There is a charge of £10 for lunch and refreshments for non-OU attendees. If you’ve got any special dietary requirements, please let us know.

 

Death of Prof. Colin Russell

We mourn the passing of Colin Russell, Professor of History of Science and Technology, who died on the 16th May. Colin started work at the Open University in 1970 and played a key role in creating the Department of the History of Science and Technology. He became Professor in 1982 and retired in 1993, continuing as Emeritus Professor. A Service of Thanksgiving will take place at noon on Thursday, 30 May at Bunyan Meeting, Mill Street, Bedford. Professor Russell will be sadly missed by his former colleagues.