This symposium was held at the British Library in London on 9 September 2011, and involved scholars from Kenya, the UK, Sweden and the US, including Dr Rodney Harrison (History Dept., OU). Hosted by Lotte Hughes (PI, OU), with Profs. Annie Coombes (Co-I, Birkbeck College, University of London) and Karega-Munene (United States International University, Nairobi, Kenya), this closed event featured presentations on a wide range of heritage and history-related subjects, including: memorialization as a human right; exhibiting photographic histories in Western Kenya; an examination of memorials to Barack Obama at K’Ogello; Akamba carving; memorialising Mau Mau; managing heritage as a resource for building nationhood and social cohesiveness; community conservation of sacred forests; an examination of displays on material culture and Kenyan identity at National Museums of Kenya; the challenges of commemorating former president Daniel arap Moi; and efforts to commemorate Giriama heroine Mekatilili wa Menza.
Seminar: ‘Oral History & Criminal Justice Museums, Libraries & Archives’ Friday 28th October 2011
The Crime And Punishment Collections Network and the International Centre for the History of Crime, Policing, and Justice are holding a seminar on “Oral History & Criminal Justice Museums, Libraries & Archives” on Friday 28th October 2011, Library Seminar Rooms 1 & 2, The Open University Library, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes. Follow this link for more information.
Publication: Heritage, History and Memory: New Research from East and Southern Africa
Lotte Hughes is the guest editor of African Studies Volume 70 Number 2, August 2011 Special Issue: Heritage, History and Memory: New Research from East and Southern Africa with Annie E Coombes and Karega-Munene. This is one of two main written outputs from the AHRC-funded research project ‘Managing Heritage, Building Peace: Museums, memorialization and the uses of memory in Kenya’, led by PI Lotte Hughes, that ends on 30 September 2011. It contains articles by the 3 guest editors, and by another member of the research team, Dr Neil Carrier (University of Oxford) who was employed as a field-based consultant.
Publication: Lotte Hughes appointed reviews editor of African Affairs
Lotte Hughes has been appointed reviews editor of the top-ranked journal in area studies, African Affairs, published by the Royal Africa Society. It is ranked number 1 in the ISI citation index for Area Studies (http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/), and has a wide and influential readership of politicians, policy-makers and business people as well as academics. To contact Lotte, if you wish to review new titles, please email l.hughes@open.ac.uk.
Public Record Office and OU Ireland ‘exploring local history’ lecture series
The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in conjunction with the Open University Ireland is hosting a lecture series for members of the community to delve into the history of family, poverty, religion and local Northern Ireland. Starting on 29 September 2011 the series will be delivered by Dr Janice Holmes, Dr Olwen Purdue and Dr Barry Sheen from the Open University Ireland and will examine the major themes of local history and the sources available to local historians. PRONI staff will present examples of these sources from the archives. Follow this link for further information.
Seminar: New Research in 20th Century European History
On 21 July 2011, the War, Conflict and Politics Research Group hosted a Seminar Day on Twentieth Century European History, with a focus on War, Peace, Modernity: details of the programme are available online. You can also download the programme and abstracts as a PDF file.
Conference: The Fischer Controversy 50 years on
Annika Mombauer is organising an international conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Fritz Fischer’s book Griff nach der Weltmacht, which sparked the so-called Fischer controversy, one of the most heated historiographical debates of the 20th century. The conference, jointly organised with Professor John Röhl (Sussex) and supported by the German Historical Institute, London, The Journal of Contemporary History, and the German History Society, will take place at the GHI, London, on 13-15 October 2011. See the conference website for further details and the programme.
Conference: Pluralism, Conflict and Co-existence: Religion, Politics and Society in Western Europe
Ole Grell has been invited to speak at the Yale University conference: Pluralism, Conflict and Co-existence: Religion, Politics and Society in Western Europe from the Confessional Age to the Present (22-24 September 2011).
New publication: Brethren in Christ
Ole Grell’s Brethren in Christ. A Calvinist Network in Reformation Europe, will be published by Cambridge University Press this August.
Further information is available from CUP’s website.
New publication: The History of Policing edited by Clive Emsley
In recent years the history of police and policing has become a key area of debate across a range of disciplines: criminology, sociology, political science and history.
This authoritative series, published by Ashgate, brings together the most important and influential English-language scholarship in the field, arranged chronologically across four volumes. The series includes articles on the shifting meaning of ‘police’, the growth of bureaucratic policing during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, consolidation in the twentieth century, and the international diffusion of export models and practices. The texts included come from a range of disciplines and chart the recent debates from traditional Whig history, revisionist work published during the last quarter of the twentieth century, and subsequent reassessments.
Each volume is edited by a historian recognised as an authority in the area, and features an introductory essay which explains the key changes in the period and the significance of the selected articles and essays. The series provides a valuable resource for scholars new to the area as well as for those who may have overlooked an important essay or article published in an edited collection, or in a journal with limited circulation or from a discipline that they might not normally consult.
Further information is available at:www.ashgate.com, or you can download a flyer for each volume:
The New Police in the Nineteenth Century, Paul Lawrence
Police and Policing in the Twentieth Century, Chris A Williams
Globalising British Policing, Georgina Sinclair
Theories and Origins of the Modern Police, Clive Emsley