Dr Ciara Breathnach on the Final Report of Ireland’s Mother & Baby Homes Commission of Investigation Despite the fact that the poor law was dismantled in the 1920s, nineteenth-century workhouses are still prominent features in the Irish landscape. Ominous and foreboding, many became county and district hospitals and served as […]
Historians’ Watch
Referendums Yet to Come
In the latest from our ‘Radical History after Brexit’ series, Aoife O’Donoghue & Colin Murray explore Northern Ireland’s Brexit dilemma, and consider referendums yet to come.
Friedrich Engels at 200: A Revolutionary Historian
Should Friedrich Engels be reappraised as a radical historian for our times? To mark #Engels200, the bicentenary of Engels’ birth, Christian Høgsbjerg assesses the revolution in historiography that he helped to foment.
Honouring Trans Lives, Historicising Trans Death
November 20th marks Trans Day of Remembrance, an annual day of mourning for trans lives stolen by violence in the past 12 months. While many remembrance ceremonies are now moving from community centres to online platforms, the central purpose remains the same: to acknowledge and reckon with high rates of trans murder worldwide that are otherwise obscured from public view.
Of, or For Mary Wollstonecraft?
Is Maggi Hambling’s ‘A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft’ attuned to the intellectual accomplishments of the woman it was created for, or to the particular struggles of women in the present? Vic Clarke investigates.
Henry Dundas: Naming Empire and Genocide
How do we name empire and genocide, the structural violence embedded in our built environments, and why does it matter? Melanie J. Newton unpicks the contested legacy of Henry Dundas, eighteenth-century imperialist & “Uncrowned King of Scotland”
Amy Coney Barrett, Enoch Powell and IVF politics
When it comes to IVF politics, have the British been too quick to paint Americans as occupying the anti-scientific fringe? Laura Beers responds after the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court.