Royal Historical Society
University College London, Gower Street, LONDON, WC1E 6BT
News and Events
For news about the Society's activities and initiatives and the Bibliography of British and Irish History.
EVENTS / EXHIBITIONS
TREASURES OF LAMBETH PALACE LIBRARY
400th Anniversary Exhibition 1610 to 2010: 17 May - 23 July 2010
A series of free short talks on Saturday afternoons throughout the exhibition: leading experts highlight some of the treasures curently on display in the exhibition. The exhibition draws upon the Library's incomparably rich and diverse collections of manuscripts, archives and books, some of which will be on display for the first time. It reveals how the collections have developed since 1610 and explores the history surrounding the people how owned, studied or used them as aids to prayer and devotion.
For more information on the exhibition, please click HERE.
RE-LAUNCH OF THE HISTORIC EAST INDIA COMPANY - SUMMER 2010
The historic East India Company will be relaunching this summer after laying dormant for over 150 years and as part of this historic brand's rebirth, historiographer Antony Wild has joined the company to ensure that the past treasures are unearthed and present in the company today. Press release including details, on The East India Company and Antony Wild.
RESEARCH WEBSITES
Institute of Historical Research: Making History: the changing face of the profession in Britain
The Institute of Historical Research's Making History website, provides a guide to the development of the profession and discipline of history in Britain over the last one hundred years and more. It details major individuals, organisations, projects, journals and themes in history, and features around seventy specially commissioned articles, interviews with current historians, images, statistics and more.
The website is the outcome of a one-year project funded by the University of London Vice-Chancellor's Development Fund, and can be found at: www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory.
Anyone interested in finding out more about this resource should contact the Project Officer Danny Millum at danny.millum@sas.ac.uk, or tel. 020 7862 8812.
General Robert Ross: The Man Who Captured Washington, DC (1814)
An Irishman, Ross was a British Army Officer who participated in the Napoleonic War and the War of 1812. Ross led the army which burned public buildings in Washington DC in 1814 and is often credited as the first commander to defeat a full US military force in the field. This new website is an exciting multimedia approach to a complex subject, drawing upon sources in text, image and sound, with a view to shedding new light on a significant figure in early 19th-century British, Irish and American political history. This is a searchable website and reader response is urged and welcome.
To comment please contact Dr John McCavitt at: johnmccavitt@hotmail.com
Website: http://www.themanwhocapturedwashington.com
LECTURES, SEMINARS AND CONFERENCES
From Coronation to Chari-Vari: The Many Uses of Ritual and Ceremony in the Early Modern World': A One Day Colloquium at Birkbeck, University of London, Friday 24 September 2010
As part of Birkbeck's thriving research culture, this event will bring together scholars to discuss the purpose and reception of ritual and ceremony in the early modern period.
The key note speech will be given by Prof. Jeroen Duindam of Groningen University, 'Exhilaration and Ossification: Ritual and Ceremony in the Early Modern World'. This will take place at 6.30 pm on Thursday 23 Sep, room tbc, and will be followed by drinks. There is no charge to attend this first part of the colloquium and it is open to all. Prof. Duindam is an expert on early modern rituals and has published Vienna and Versailles: The Courts of Europe's Dynastic Rivals, 1550-1780 (Cambridge, 2003) and Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court (Amsterdam 1995). At the moment he is co-editing Royal Courts in Dynastic States and Empires: A Global Perspective (Brill Leiden, 2010).
Programme and enrolment form. Attendance fee is £20, which includes drinks and lunch; members of the Early Modern Society and students can attend for £10.
This colloquium is generously sponsored by the Royal Historical Society, the Society for the Study of French History, and the Department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck, University of London.
For more info please see: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hca/about/conferences/useofritualcolloquium
The Second World War Experience Centre is a charity based in Leeds. We are holding series of four lectures this autumn at The Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London
BEN MACINTYRE: ‘Operation Mincemeat : The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II.’ Thursday 30 September 2010
GARY SHEFFIELD:
‘The British Soldier in the Second World War: the Experience of Combat’
Monday 18 October 2010
KAROL COLONNA-CZOSNOWSKI:
‘Beyond the Taiga: Memoirs of a Survivor.’
Tuesday 2 November 2010
CHARLES GLASS:
‘Americans in Paris: Life and Death under Nazi Occupation, 1940 -1944 ‘
Thursday 18 November 2010
All lectures are held at the State Apartments, Royal Hospital, Chelsea, London. Lectures begin at 6.40 pm. Reception & Refreshments 6.00 pm & after the Lecture from 8.00 till 8.45pm
Ticket price per lecture £30. For more information or to book tickets, please contact:
The Second World War Experience Centre, 2 Feast Field (off Town St), Horsforth, Leeds, LS18 4TJ, Tel: 0113 258 4993 Fax: 0113 258 2557; Email:enquiries@war-experience.org.
Calls for Papers
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH RUSSIAN STUDIES POSTGRADUATE ONE-DAY CONFERENCE
University of Edinburgh Princess Dachkova Centre, 15 October 2010
The University of Edinburgh's School of History, Classics and Archaeology and School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures are happy to announce a one-day conference for postgraduate researchers in the field of Russian studies
This conference aims to examine understandings and practices of ideology in relation to all aspects of Russian culture, considering questions such as: how does ideology influence the creation of cultural products or political ideologies? How are ideologies understood, accepted or resisted? How do ideologies co-exist or compete in the Russian context? The term "ideology" is to be considered broadly, and a speaker may wish to consider, for example, political ideologies, ideology of language or religious ideologies. The keynote address will be given by Dr Iain McLaughlin of the University of Edinburgh.
We wish to provide a forum for postgraduates in all areas of the field to present to, and interact with, colleagues in other subject areas. Panels will therefore include history, politics, language, literature and social sciences. We invite proposals for research papers on topics relating to all periods of Russian history, and welcome academic staff and students to attend as audience members.
Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words for twenty-minute papers to russianstudiesconference@gmail.com by Monday 23 August, 2010. Abstracts should also include the speaker's name, institutional affiliation and a paper title. Travel bursaries will be available for speakers coming from outside Edinburgh, contingent upon funding.
If you would like to attend as an audience member only, please confirm your attendance to the above email address by Friday 24 September, 2010.
CULTURES, COMMUNITIES AND CONFLICTS IN THE MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN
University of Southampton, 4-6 July 2011
Second Biennial Conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean
Keynote Speakers: Professor Graham Loud (Leeds), Dr Anna Contadini (SOAS, London)
The University of Southampton is proud to host the 2011 second biennial conference of the Society for the medieval Mediterranean . This three-day conference will bring scholars together to explore the interaction of the various peoples, societies, faiths and cultures of the medieval Mediterranean, a region which had been commonly represented as divided by significant religious and cultural differences. The objective of the conference is to highlight the extent to which the medieval Mediterranean was not just an area of conflict but also a highly permeable frontier across which people, goods and ideas crossed and influenced neighbouring cultures and societies. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers in the fields of archaeology, art and architecture, ethnography, history (including the histories of science, medicine and cartography), languages, literature, music, philosophy and religion. Submission on the following topics would be particularly welcome:
* Activities of missionary orders;
* Artistic contacts and exchanges;
* Byzantine and Muslim navies
* Captives and slaves;
* Cargoes, galleys and warships;
* Cartography;
* Costume and vestments
* Diplomacy;
* Judaism and Jewish Mediterranean History;
* Literary contacts and exchanges
* Material Culture;
* Minority Populations in the Christian and Islamic Worlds;
* Mirrors for Princes
* Music, sacred and secular;
* Port towns/city states;
* Relations between Jews, Christians and Muslims;
* Religious practices: saints, cults and heretics;
* Scientific exchange, including astronomy, medicine and mathematics;
* Seafaring, seamanship and shipbuilding;
* Sufis & Sufi Orders in North Africa and the Levant;
* Sultans, kings and other rulers;
* Trade and Pilgrimage;
* Travel writing;
* Warfare: mercenaries and crusaders
Please send any enquiries and abstracts of papers of 300 words maximum together with a brief CV to the organisers, Dr Francois Soyer (f.j.soyer@soton.ac.uk) and Rebecca Bridgman (rmb77@cam.ac.uk). We also welcome proposals for 3-paper sessions. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 1 October 2010.
THE GLOBAL DIMENSIONS OF EUROPEAN KNOWLEDGE, 1450-1700
Birkbeck, University of London, 24 - 25 June, 2011.
An international conference organized with support from The Leverhulme Trust, the Society for Renaissance Studies and Birkbeck, University of London
Keynote Speakers: Professor Felipe Fernández-Armesto (Notre Dame),
Professor Pamela Smith (Columbia), Dr Joan-Pau Rubiés (London School of
Economics)
Plenary Speakers: Professor Ricardo Padrón (Virginia), Professor Nicolás Wey-
Gómez (Brown), Dr Michiel van Groesen (Amsterdam) Afterword: Professor Peter Burke (Cambridge)
The period 1450-1700 saw the expansion of European seaborne reconnaissance of Africa, Asia, the Americas and Oceania, which would lead to long-distance European empires in these regions. It also witnessed changes in European knowledge-making practices that heralded what is often termed the Scientific Revolution. This conference will investigate the impact of European exploration and travel on the structures, contents and sources of authority of European knowledge c. 1450-1700. It seeks to explore connections between the making of knowledge and a broad range of intellectual, political, cultural, religious and mercantile encounters between Europe and the wider world. It aims to bring together scholars from different disciplines working on any aspect of European knowledge that included an extra-European dimension. Forms of knowledge under consideration include ethnology, natural history, botany, natural philosophy, geography, cartography, medicine and chronology.
Overarching questions
* In what ways was European knowledge re-shaped by exploration, imperialism
and colonialism?
* To what extent did indigenous knowledge systems influence European ‘science’?
* How did information about distant places circulate, and how was it changed
by circulation?
* What was the nature of the exchanges of information and expertise between
travellers, missionaries, colonial administrators, indigenous informants,
artisans, scholars, readers and other groups from different countries? What
challenges did these exchanges pose for testimony and authority?
* What was the impact of colonial rivalries on the ways in which information was interpreted, used and disseminated?
Possible panel themes might include: first-hand testimony and authority; expectations and observations; circulation networks; artisans and learned societies; cultural encounters and indigenous knowledge; gender and knowledge; empire and knowledge; commerce and collecting; classification and the structures of knowledge; visual culture.
Proposals are welcomed for full panels and individual papers (25 mins).
Individual submissions should comprise a paper title, abstract (up to 300
words) and brief CV (max. one page) emphasizing publications. For full panel
proposals, please include an additional 300-word description of the panel
itself.
Submissions should be sent to the conference organizer, Dr Surekha Davies (Birkbeck, University of London) at s.davies@bbk.ac.uk, and to Prof. Ricardo Padrón (University of Virginia) at padron@virginia.edu by 31 July 2010. A selection of papers will be published as an edited collection.
News
NEXT EVENT
Professor Barbara Taylor
"THE DEMISE OF THE ASYLUM IN LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY BRITAIN: A PERSONAL HISTORY"
Friday 24 September 2010 at 5.30pm
UCL
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