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Category: History

Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ group for its efforts to free the world of nuclear weapons

Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Japanese atomic bomb survivors’ group for its efforts to free the world of nuclear weapons

Open University academic Dr Luc-Andre Brunet, a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary International History and Eirini Karamouzi, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary History from the University of Sheffield tell us more about Nobel-Prize-winning Nihon Hidankyo. The 2024 Nobel peace prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots organisation created by survivors of the two US […]

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Kyle looking aside from the camera, smiling with floral wallpaper behind him.

‘My confidence is the best it’s ever been, thanks to the OU’

Hampered by low confidence, Kyle, 36, rejected the place he was offered at a campus university, despite his lifelong dream of achieving a degree. Now studying Arts and Humanities at The Open University (OU), Kyle shares how a promise to his late nan gave him the strength to fulfil his potential and unleash an insatiable […]

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OU historian provides timely expertise to Channel 4’s Britain Behind Bars

OU historian provides timely expertise to Channel 4’s Britain Behind Bars

The Open University’s Head of History Rosalind Crone recently shared her many years of research into prison history to help make Channel 4’s Britain Behind Bars: A Secret History. The series airing on Sunday evenings at 9pm on Channel 4, and available to watch in full on My4, follows barrister and TV personality Rob Rinder’s […]

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A million digital ‘tourists’ descend on ancient Pompeii

A million digital ‘tourists’ descend on ancient Pompeii

A digital team at The Open University are celebrating after learning their interactive online tour of Pompeii before Mount Vesuvius erupted has notched up more than a million online clicks. Designers within the OU’s Broadcast and Partnerships team were delighted when they learned of the interactive figures, just a month after the airing of the […]

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New TV documentary brings to life D-Day landings thanks to rare and previously unheard interviews

New TV documentary brings to life D-Day landings thanks to rare and previously unheard interviews

A new Open University/BBC co-production of a documentary TV series to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings in northern France – D-Day: The Unheard Tapes – is about to begin. From 9pm on Sunday 2 June, BBC Two airs the three-part programme about the historic event on 6 June 1944 when 156,000 Allied […]

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Gaza campus protests: why understanding 1960s student demonstrations and police reaction is relevant today

Gaza campus protests: why understanding 1960s student demonstrations and police reaction is relevant today

For anybody interested in the history of the 1960s, the ongoing protests at US universities have a peculiar resonance. Dr Sinead McEneaney, Staff Tutor and Senior Lecturer in History at The Open University, tells us why. In the past weeks, riot police have entered several college campuses at the behest of administrators to break up […]

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Michael wearing graduation gown and blue glasses, looking at the camera with a background of plant leaves.

Historian who challenged the view of Black British history is honoured

A pioneering Black historian whose research has transformed the nation’s understanding of our Black British history has been awarded an honorary degree from The Open University and confessed he is “unashamedly woke” . A delighted Michael Ohajuru made the comments as he accepted his Doctor of the University award, for all that he has accomplished, […]

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judges hammer

19th century court case with all the hallmarks in today’s Post Office scandal

In a week when Mr Bates gave evidence at the ongoing inquiry into the post office scandal, here Rosalind Crone, Professor of History at The Open University, points to a 129-year old case that contains similar hallmarks: a grave miscarriage of justice; massive press attention and storytelling that made all the difference. Google the name […]

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Young people took up smoking during the pandemic – how tobacco has been used for stress relief for more than a century

Young people took up smoking during the pandemic – how tobacco has been used for stress relief for more than a century

Through his research interest in the smoking habits of people in war-time Britain, Dr Michael Reeve, a Lecturer in Modern British History, shows us how social disruption and stress, over time, has drawn people towards tobacco. In the UK and much of the west, smoking rates have consistently declined since the turn of the millennium. […]

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‘Thrilling’ BBC documentary airs about the history of the Union

‘Thrilling’ BBC documentary airs about the history of the Union

The turbulent history of how Great Britain evolved is dissected in an intriguing Open University/BBC co-production – Union with historian David Olusoga – which reaches the small screen tonight (Monday 2 October). The four-part series airs on BBC Two at 9pm and charts the history of the Union from the 1600s – a century defined […]

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