New Renewal just dropped! Some fantastic stuff in this issue, including essays from Jane Gingrich, Jon Cruddas, Hilary Cottam, @ewangibbs.bsky.social, @joshwesterling.bsky.social, @abbyabhaya.bsky.social, and @benjthomas.bsky.social
Worse than limited opening hours, it's the withdrawal of 2/3 of the archive for curiosity-driven research that is the real scandal for what is supposed to be a public-service organization.
🔔⏰Just over 1 month to go! ⏰🔔
Call for papers: Modern British History and the 'Environmental Turn'
A two-day workshop organised by
@andrewseaton.bsky.social and myself at Lincoln College, Oxford, 16-17 September. Deadline for abstracts is 15 May.
Details in poster below!
QMUL is advertising an exciting opportunity: a fully funded PhD studentship, working on European politics, ideology, and political 'myths' with @karlpike.bsky.social and @timbale.bsky.social. Details below.
www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRB421/p...
Samuel Pepys had significant professional and social connections to transatlantic slavery in the years covered by his diary and afterwards, mediated by his involvement with two English slave-trading companies – the Royal African Company and the Company of Royal Adventurers trading to Africa. He also owned and sold at least two enslaved people in London in the 1670s and 1680s. This article uses previously neglected manuscript evidence to reassess Pepys’s involvement in enslavement and his status as an enslaver. It emphasizes three themes: the relationship between Pepys’s official connections to the African companies and his private ownership of enslaved people; the development of his involvement in slavery within his extensive social and professional networks; and Pepys’s own agency in curating his official and personal archives to shape and limit our knowledge of his slave ownership. In doing so, it considers how the consciously expressed professional and ethical priorities of administrators and slave-owners like Pepys shaped the complex archival traces of slavery in England and erased the experiences and voices of enslaved people.
📣Out now on #firstview
Michael Edwards @jesuscollegecam.bsky.social on 'Samuel Pepys, the African Companies, and the Archives of Slavery, 1660–1689'
#Archives #Letters #Diary #History 17thc 🗃️
👉Read open access: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Great article
Applications for participation open: 1-day workshop for doctoral/ early career historians on history of Black health and healthcare in 20th-century Britain
📢 Doctoral and early career historians: submit your abstracts for the 1-day Cambridge-based workshop examining the history of Black health and healthcare in 20th-century Britain.
Submission deadline: 1 April
Workshop date: 29 May
More info and contact info👉 histmed.org/call-for-par...
🚨 We're looking for a new Project Archivist 🚨The main objective of the project is to catalogue the papers of Harriet Harman. [Full time, 2 years fixed contract]
The deadline for applications is 3 April 2026 with interviews planning to be on the 14 April 2026
buff.ly/mhMCz8E
We're recruiting: Colombo: Layered Histories in the Global South City Fully-funded 3-year Doctoral Studentship
📢 NEW fully funded PhD Studentship for the UKRI-funded project, Colombo: Layered Histories in the Global South City.
This is a full-time international studentship for 3 years, starting Oct 2026
Deadline: 3 May 2026
🔗For eligibility & to apply: www.hist.cam.ac.uk/colombo-laye...
On 19 March we're launching @morganj0nes.bsky.social's brilliant new history of the People's Vote campaign.
From Steve Bray & EU Supergirl to John McDonnell & Alastair Campbell, we'll explore one of the most turbulent & remarkable periods in UK politics.Do come!
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/no-second-...
Very useful piece by Nick Clarke, Alex Hill and Jonathan Moss on an archive heavily used by historians of modern Britain - and underutilised by scholars of British politics.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Totally superb and fearless writing here from Susan Pedersen.
“…any man shocked by the Epstein story has been working over time at shutting his eyes”
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Final lecture online - www.history.ox.ac.uk/event/self-v... - on all the concepts stacking up in the late 20th century, not superseded by ‘neoliberal’ or economic ones. Feedback welcome for the book now in progress. And farewell with warm thanks to all in Oxford.
New paper:
Mass Observing British Politics
On what Mass Observation might contribute to political studies (and what political studies might contribute to Mass Observation). With @jmoss88.bsky.social and Alex Hill. Also paging @massobsarchive.bsky.social
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Briefly here to post that the ‘Women Strike Back’ exhibition has just launched in Bristol. It explores the activism of Black and South Asian women. Free and open to the public. Pls do share the news.
www.bristol247.com/news-and-fea...
Why did the People's Vote campaign fail? Could Brexit have been stopped? What lessons can be learned?
Join us on 19 March to launch @morganj0nes.bsky.social's new book: "No Second Chances: The Inside Story of the Campaign for a Second Referendum".
All welcome!
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/no-second-...
Fifth lecture now online - www.history.ox.ac.uk/event/self-a... - about self-assertion, identity and rights talk from the '50s to the '70s, and clashes over it from the late '60s. Final lecture on those continuing clashes & whether neoliberalism overrode them this Thursday 5pm Exam Schools Oxford.
Congratulations to @christinegrandy.bsky.social for the publication of Race on Screen: Audience Racism in Twentieth-Century Britain, the latest title in our Cambridge Modern British Histories series. Paperback a snip at £28. #Skystorians
Fantastic funded PhD opportunity here in the School of Humanities at Reading - please share widely! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Dr Rebecca Orr wins 2025 Duncan Tanner Essay Prize. Orr is a historian of postcolonial migration and research fellow at King's College, Cambridge.
Rebecca Orr, research fellow @kingscollege.bsky.social, wins Duncan Tanner Essay Prize for outstanding scholarship in modern British history 👏👏
Orr was awarded by @mbhjournal.bsky.social for her article: The Growth of the British Private Security Industry & the Ends of Empire, 1960-74
Read more ⬇️
Friends, can I ask you to spread the word that we have a THREE-YEAR postdoc in American history at Cambridge up for grabs - ANY field, but applications are due March 1 so don't delay - apply, apply, apply! networks.h-net.org/jobs/69790/u...
We're looking to capture experiences of what it means to be queer in the UK today! To do that we're collecting day diaries for 12th February. It doesn't matter what you get up to, or how you record it, we'd love to have it!🧵 (1/4) #LGBTplusHM #lgbthm26
Good to see this up!
In this piece itself, I argue the problem is not *just* Keir Starmer.
Three scholarships for PhD in Arthur Scargill Archive - quite the opportunity. Believe me when I say that I am sure that some of the stuff in here will be quite the eye-opener! (if the good stuff hasn't been already shredded or slapped with an embargo)
I really enjoyed reviewing @kitkowol.bsky.social's "Blue Jerusalem" - an excellent new study of WW2-era British Conservatism, highlighting both its intellectual vitality and its practical political impact
Job opportunity: 18 month fellowship in British Studies working @ihr.bsky.social to undertake own research and prep for NACBS2027 @thenacbs.bsky.social
www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...
Thanks so much Eunice!
An Injury To All: The Unmaking of the British Working Class will be published by Verso in October!
Today I submitted responses to last comments from my editor and worked on the blurb. It's getting closer and closer!
First lecture now available online - www.history.ox.ac.uk/event/founda... - if you’re in Oxford tomorrow, 29th, come hear the second live with drinks reception afterwards.
Prof @petermandler.bsky.social will give the James Ford Lectures 2026 @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social
Peter Mandler will chart the spread & use of the language of social science into everyday life in 20th-century Britain.
Thursdays, 5pm
Weeks 1-6 Hilary Term
🔗 www.history.ox.ac.uk/james-ford-l...