On day five of a fourteen day strike across UK universities against cuts to pensions, four historians share reflections from the picket lines on solidarity, precarity, and the marketisation of education.
Historians’ Watch
The Truth in Stories
Marina Warner on the power of fables in a post-truth era of President Trump and fake news
‘Suspended between worlds’: Brexit and citizens of nowhere in the 17th and 21st centuries
Eva Johanna Holmberg – a historian who studies travellers crossing borders in the seventeenth century – on being threatened with deportation as a European academic in the UK in 2017
The NHS and its ‘Willing Providers’
As the NHS strains under a ‘winter crisis’ without sufficient funding, Anne Summers looks at the limits of private provision of healthcare in 1800 and 2018.
Grenfell Fire and the Politics of Public Inquiries
As the Grenfell Tower inquiry begins its hearing amidst criticisms about the process from survivors and families, Simon Peplow reflects on the politics of participation in public inquiries since the 1980s.
Democracy and Disaster: Pakistan in Bangladesh (1970) and Trump in Puerto Rico (2017)
Naomi Hossain compares President Trump’s handling of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017 to the Pakistani government’s response to the 1970 Bhola Cyclone in Bangladesh, to examine the implications of disaster for legitimacy, imperial power and democracy.
Navigating the Catalan Crisis: Independence in Context
As the Catalan question becomes one of the most salient contemporary issues in Europe, Andrew Dowling argues that the call for independence is remarkably new, but can only be understood in the context of centuries of dispute between Catalonia and Spain
The Heritage Justification: Public Monuments and Uses of History in Charlottesville and Oxford
As statues spark controversy, Laura Leonard critically examines how white supremacists in Charlottesville, as well as critics of the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign, have invoked heritage as a legitimising language.
Working class bodies in English garden cities
As the UK government announces plans for a dozen new “garden cities”, Sam Clevenger argues that, from their inception, garden cities were middle class attempts to civilize the bodies and health of the urban working class.
Thinking about denial: its impact on the climate, our politics and the writing of history
Catherine Hall and Daniel Pick reflect on the power of denial, the danger of myopia, and the ways denial holds people together, shaping collective and national memories.
