What value do the lessons of the past have in shaping strategies for managing the COVID-19 outbreak? In this article, Guillaume Lachenal and Gaëtan Thomas argue that an over-reliance on the allure of ‘pandemic precedents’ needs to be replaced with an enhanced understanding of the capacity of present crises to resist historical interpretation.
With debates over the public history of empire and colonialism intensifying across Europe, Afonso Dias Ramos explores the controversy in Portugal over the use of the term “Discoveries” to encompass the country’s complex colonial past.
On the 50th anniversary of the end of the Nigeria-Biafra War, Dr Louisa Uchum Egbunike reflects on how we should remember the conflict.
On Sunday 5th May 2019, Glasgow’s annual May Day demonstration marked the final and largest centenary event commemorating the events of 1919. Commemoration of the Battle of George Square has interested diverse groups of researchers, activists and institutions. Its politics are negotiated between conflicting claims grounded in assertions of authenticity, familial connection and intellectual authority. Respect for tradition meets the desire to create a ‘usable past’ fit for the second decade of the 21st century. How do these conflicting ideologies wrestle to find meaning and relevance in the city’s radical past?
What is the role of space and place in the commemoration of Peterloo? Katrina Navickas explores the massacre’s legacy in the streets of Manchester.
A record of suffering: curator Janette Martin examines a report published shortly after the Peterloo Massacre which memorialises the injuries and identities of the victims.
How can different types of historian work together? Laura King argues that collaboration with family historians has the potential to galvanise academic research.
‘Family history lends a different perspective’. Family historian Janet Coles on tracing her Huguenot refugee ancestry.
In the second article of our feature on the radical potential of family history, family historian Mark Crail reflects on the power of collaboration in the history of working-class movements.
Not just nostalgia: family historians are at the forefront of challenges to traditional histories that are ‘gendered, classed, raced and heteronormative’, argues public historian Tanya Evans.
