by Prof. Pierre Asselin (San Diego State University) As I sit here and reflect on the contemporary relevance of my Past & Present article “National liberation by other means: US visitor diplomacy in the Vietnam War” (August 2024) on US citizens who visited North Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1965-75), it strikes me how some world leaders learn from the past while others completely ignore or refuse to heed the lessons and other insights it offers. The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War is a telling example.  Consciously or serendipitously, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has borrowed from the North Vietnamese wartime/revolutionary playbook to offset his army’s inferiority relative to Russia’s, and frustrate Moscow’s geo-strategic designs over his country, as of the time of this writing at least.  He has done so by undertaking an aggressive diplomatic campaign à la Ho Chi Minh to win foreign hearts and minds, and vital military aid along with that.  While Hanoi at the time managed to secure material, economic, political, and moral support from a broad range of state and non-state actors – including the socialist bloc, Third World governments, and progressive action groups in the West –, Kyiv has been most successful at winning over state leaders and publics […]

by Dr. Chiara Blanco (Newcastle University) The academic conference ‘The Epistemology of Ancient Embryology’ took place over three days from the 1st to the 3rd of July 2024 at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge in a hybrid format, and it included a total of 14 speakers and a peak of 53 attendants (22 in person and 31 online) from all over the world. The conference explored ancient theories concerning the formation and development of the embryo, and how ancient physicians and philosophers sought to address this complex issue by applying their own doctrines and beliefs. This latter, particularly fascinating, aspect entailed a discussion of a plethora of different methodological solutions adopted by ancient thinkers, from analogies mostly based on artifacts, plants and other animals, to cosmological and mathematical calculations. Thus the conference provided a platform to compare different ancient views about the topic, while highlighting connections and the development of such ideas in the ancient world; its epistemological angle, along with its focus on interactions between different authors, which went beyond Classical antiquity, and also embraced ancient Egypt and China, constitutes a true novelty for the field. Caterina Pellò (Geneva) opened the conference with a paper discussing some […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Past and Present was pleased to learn that Dr. Somak Biswas (Cambridge) has been awarded the 2024 UK Royal Historical Society’s (RHS) Gladstone Prize. The RHS website explains: “The Gladstone Book Prize was launched in 1998 following a founding donation from the Gladstone Memorial Trust on the centenary of William Gladstone’s death. The prize offers an annual award of £1,000 for a work of history on a topic not primarily related to British history that is the author’s first sole book publication. In 2015, the Linbury Trust made a generous donation of £12,500 in support of the Gladstone Prize.” Dr. Biswas was awarded this year’s prize for his book Passages through India: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Indophilia, 1890–1940 (Cambridge, 2023) which he worked on while a Past and Present Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, London. The judges citation states: “We are very pleased to award this year’s prize to Somak Biswas’s ‘Passages Through India: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Indophilia, 1890-1940′. The panel agreed that is an elegantly written and inventive study that provocatively unsettles our historical understandings of leading Hindu Indian figures (including Gandhi, Tagore, […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Past and Present was pleased to learn that Dr. Damilola Adebayo (York University) was awarded two prizes at July’s Joint ICOHTEC-SHOT 2024 annual meeting at Viña del Mar, Chile. The prize was awarded for his Open Access article “Electricity, Agency and Class in Lagos Colony, C.1860S–1914” which was published in Past & Present No. 262 (February 2024). Dr. Adebayo was awarded the International Commitee for the History of Technology’s (ICOHTEC) Maurice Daumas Prize. The Maurice Daumas Prize is awarded annually by ICOHTEC: “…to the author of the best article submitted which deals with the history of technology in any period of the past or in any part of the world and which was published in a journal or edited volume in last two consequent years.” Dr. Adebayo was also awarded the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize. The Bernard S. Finn IEEE History Prize is: “…awarded annually to the best paper in the history of electrotechnology – power, electronics, telecommunications, and computer science.” Our congradulations to Dr. Adebayo on his research being recognised with these two prestigious awards.  

by Dr. Nathan Cardon (University of Birmingham) and Dr. Paul Lawrie (York University) On Thursday, 25 April 2024, thanks to the generosity of the Past and Present Society, historians gathered at the University of Birmingham for a one-day workshop to discuss how we might translate new historical work on the intersections of race, technology, and temporality to a wider audience with science and technology museums as sites of intervention. In recent years, the extension of racial exclusion to new technologies has made headlines around the world. It is clear that new technologies rather than disrupting racial biases have continued them: whether that it is in face- and voice recognition software, generative AI replicating racist stereotypes to new technologies of surveillance and social media’s metastasizing the networks and discourse of white supremacy. As sociologist Ruha Benjamin has made clear, current forms of online technology and software not only reproduce anti-Black racism but are products of it, leading her to claim we live in a period of a ‘New Jim Code’.1 What is striking about many of these conversations is the lack of historical questions. Historians seem to be absent from a seat at the table thus exacerbating notions of technology as […]

by Dr. Matilda Greig (National Army Museum, London) Humanitarianism and the military should no longer be seen as parallel but separate subjects, and our understanding of both ‘military humanitarianism’ and its chronology need to significantly expand. Rather than seeing it as post-Cold War phenomenon, could we trace the roots of military–humanitarian interaction back to the early nineteenth century, or beyond? This was the central provocation behind the call for contributions for an edited volume, issued in early 2023 by Margot Tudor and Brian Drohan, which was tested on 15th and 16th January 2024 in discussions at a workshop at City, University of London, where contributors to the volume shared the findings from their first drafts. Present to ponder over these questions was a room full of international historians, political scientists, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, myself as an over-eager literary historian, and the most superior conference pastries I’ve ever encountered. Broadening the definition of military humanitarianism beyond simply military interventions motivated or justified by humanitarian ideals, the editors had challenged us also to think about the many points of connection between the armed forces and humanitarian organisations, and the influence of humanitarian ideals upon military identities […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Past & Present was pleased to learn that Dr. Jessica O’Leary (Australian Catholic University) has recently been awarded two prizes for her Open Access article “The Uprooting of Indigenous Women’s Horticultural Practices in Brazil, 1500–1650” which was published in Past & Present No. 262 (February 2024). Dr. O’Leary was awarded the biennial Philippa Maddern ECR Publication Prize by the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (ANZAMEMS). As ANZAMEMS explain: “The Philippa Maddern ECR Publication Prize is awarded to an Early Career Researcher (ECR) for the best article-length scholarly work in any discipline/topic falling within the scope of medieval and early modern studies, published within the below date range.” More recently Dr. O’Leary was awarded the Australian Women’s History Network’s Mary Bennett Prize. This prize is awarded “to the best article or chapter bearing the hallmarks of advanced historical scholarship and contribution to the academic field of women’s history”. The award is only made in years when a piece of scholarship is deemed to have reached the levels of quality and significance required to obtain it. When awarded the prize consists of an award of two hundred Australian Dollars and […]

Received from Dr. Nathasja Roggo-van Luijn (Johannes Gutenberg- Universität Mainz) Epistemology of Ancient Embryology Conference Dates: 1st – 3rd July 2024 Location: Department of Classics, University of Cambridge/and online Event website Overview This conference will explore the various epistemological practices and strategies used in ancient Graeco-Roman embryology. An embryo can turn into a fully-fledged human being, but it is unclear how exactly that happens, as the inner workings of a pregnant female body cannot directly be observed. What methods did ancient thinkers use to circumvent this problem and nevertheless say something about the formation of embryos? What strategies did they employ to come up with theories, corroborate general principles, adapt theories from predecessors, and communicate their own theories to their audiences? Strategies which were employed include dissection, vivisection, empirical observation of the pregnant female body, studying miscarriages, talking to women and midwives, comparisons with artefacts or plants, inferences from the pregnancy of animals, and connecting it to cosmological views by principle of ‘microcosm-macrocosm’. The conference will focus on the Graeco-Roman world, inviting experts on a range of thinkers (the ‘Presocratics’, the Hippocratic Corpus, Aristotle, Hellenistic doctors, the Stoics, Galen, Middle- and Neoplatonism), but will also include a comparative panel on […]

Via the Royal Historical Society View the original post on the Royal Historical Society Website RHS Masters’ Scholarships provide financial support to students from groups currently underrepresented in academic History. Each Scholarship is worth £5,000. The next round of applications, for students studying for a Masters’ degree in History from September 2024 is now open. Further information on how to apply are available below. Applications may be made via the Society’s applications. This year the Society seeks to award eight scholarships to students who will begin a Masters’ degree in History (full or part-time) at a UK university from the start of the next academic year. The Society thanks the Past & Present Society and the Scouloudi Foundation for their generous support of this year’s awards. The programme, established in 2022, seeks to actively address underrepresentation within the discipline, and enable Black and Asian students, along with those of other minorities, to consider academic research in History. By supporting Masters’ students the programme focuses on a key early stage in the academic training of future researchers. With these Scholarships, we seek to support students who are without the financial means to study for a Masters’ in History. By doing so, we hope to improve the […]

Received from Dr. Peter Agócs (University College London) The UCL Department of Greek and Latin, the Department of Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Birmingham, Palladion/Graecoaegyptiaca and the Ourania Network are organising a conference entitled ‘Cosmic Magic. Astronomy, Astrology and Graeco-Aegyptian Cultural Interactions’. For the programme, please see here. The conference, which is fully hybrid, will take place on June 3rd and 4th, 2024 in the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies’ G11 Common Ground Seminar Room (UCL Wilkins Building, South Wing), and on Zoom. Anyone interested is cordially invited. If you plan to attend, please register via the Eventbrite page. If you wish to attend in person, please write an email to p.agocs@ucl.ac.uk. Any questions you may have can also be addressed to this email. The society of Egypt in the Hellenistic and Roman periods was a unique and fascinating melting-pot of Egyptian, Near Eastern and Greek influences. The astronomy and astrology of the period is an exciting area in which to study this rich cultural hybridity. Cosmology was an area where science, religion and magic met and cross-fertilized in a culture where the boundaries between these areas were differently defined. This international project, conceived and run […]