Received from Dr. Joe Harley (University of Derby) In recent decades the ‘home’ has come to the forefront of historical investigations. Domestic production and work, such as spinning and farming, has received some renewed attention as part of this, yet the poor are still relatively under-researched compared to richer people. This conference aims to address these issues by focusing on domestic production in the homes of the poor. View the Domestic production and work in poor British homes, c. 1650-1850 programme here. The conference will bring together speakers who research a wide range of domestic activities, such as textile production, brewing and dairying. This will allow us to create a dialogue between people working in various areas and develop a holistic understanding of the relative importance of different types of domestic production and work in poor British households. Professor John Styles, University of Hertfordshire, has been confirmed as keynote speaker for the event. He will be discussing some of the project findings of a major Economic Research Council project he led on hand spinning and the industrial revolution. Registration for the conference can be made here, through the University of Derby. *Registration Update* As of 27/08/2019 this event is at […]

by the Past & Present editorial team  Past & Present was pleased to learn that Dr. Lydia Walker (Dartmouth College, NH/Institute of Historical Research, London) had a feature article in The Washington Post that drew upon some of the research that she published first in Past & Present. The Washington Post article is entitled “Why have we forgotten one of WWII’s most important battles?” and explores the legacy (and relative lack of public awareness regarding) of one of the major battles of the Second World War in South Asia. Her Past & Present article is called “Decolonisation in the 1960s: On Legitimate and Illegitimate Nationalist” Claims-Making” and appeared in Past & Present #242 (February 2019). In conjunction with The Washington Post article our publisher Oxford University Press have agreed to make “Decolonisation in the 1960s: On Legitimate and Illegitimate Nationalist” Claims-Making” free to read and download for a limited time period (until the end of June 2019). Dr. Walker is a Past & Present Society sponsored Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, London during 2019-21.

received from Kiran Mehta (Wolfson, Oxford) Hello! We invite you to join us for this two-day conference on prisons and incarceration in England, 1500-1850, that is taking place at Keble College, Oxford, UK on the 15th and 16th of July 2019. A provisional programme will be available online here and the poster can be downloaded here. Overview This conference will bring together senior academics and early career researchers to share their ongoing research into English imprisonment, discuss recent developments in the field, and set out new agendas for the history of prisons and imprisonment. This conference is interdisciplinary–our speakers are historians, literary scholars and criminologists–, spans a wide chronology, and takes an inclusive view of imprisonment, including not only criminal custody and incarceration, but also the imprisonment of debtors and prisoners of war. Our speakers employ a myriad of approaches in studying imprisonment, and the conference will encompass the complete range of prisons that existed in this period, beyond the penitentiary, including lock-ups, roundhouses, compters or counters, gaols, houses of correction or bridewells and prison hulks. Together, our speakers seek to explain the role that imprisonment and prisoners played in English society, economy and political life. Early scholars of imprisonment […]

Prof. Jane Whittle (University of Exeter) For years I have been frustrated by many historians’ approach to women’s ‘domestic work’. Domestic work is used as an explanation for women’s failure to contribute to the same extent as men to the rest of the economy, but is rarely subject to serious study in its own right. Additionally, writers were rarely clear what they meant by ‘domestic work’, and when they did specify its meaning, it was evident it meant significantly different things to different people. My article in Past & Present #243 on ‘A Critique of Approaches to “Domestic Work”’ is an attempt to unpick these issues. It was a journey that took me to unexpected destinations, and the more I probed, the bigger the issues involved became. As a result, the article ended up being about how we conceptualise work and the economy, tracing these ideas back into the history of economic thought. And the solutions lay primarily with the work of feminist development economists and political scientists in their blistering critiques of the real-world consequences of adopting a definition of work that prioritised men’s activities over women’s. Behind all this lay the work of economist Margaret Reid, who in […]

by the Past & Present editorial team

Received from Mattin Biglari (SOAS, London) This two-day international conference brings together doctoral students and early-career scholars to discuss the different ways energy is and has been intertwined with economic, social, cultural and political developments and processes. The aim of the conference is centring attention on energy as a key agent in modern and contemporary history, in contrast to its typical designation as an external subject of research exclusive to the Natural Sciences. At a moment of global climate crisis, it is necessary to critically analyse energy systems and their entanglement in social, economic and political realities. This discussion will develop crucial understanding of the use of alternative and renewable forms of energy. The conference (taking place at CRASSH, Cambridge 31 May to 1 June 2019) will address the significance of historically uneven development in determining the different ways energy is used and conceptualised around the world. As the negotiations of the 2016 Paris climate accord highlighted, plans for energy transition must also engage with calls for energy justice. Therefore, this conference will focus on cultures of energy in the Global South, drawing attention to particular connections between energy, colonialism and the post-colonial state. We address an array of different […]

received from Dr. Liesbeth Corens (Queen Mary, London)  Introduction In a time of ‘alternative facts’ and ‘fake news’ we may long for an earlier, purportedly simpler world in which facts were simply facts. But were facts ever that simple? How did past generations separate fact from fiction; truth from falsehood; and proof from hearsay? Tradition has it that written proof once ruled supreme, whether it concerned early modern scholarship or litigation, the spiritual world of demons and the saints or the worldly realm of land rights and taxation. As historians in different fields have since realised, proof was an omnipresent, but nevertheless contested practice that bred fierce conflicts about degrees of trust, the nature of truth, the boundaries between scholarly disciplines, and the purview of official institutions. The historiography on proof is varied, and scholars work in parallel traditions; historians of science are inspired by Bruno Latour; historians of religion look at wonders and miracles; historians of scholarship discuss authenticity and forgery; cultural historians are fascinated by the witness. Proof, in short, has enjoyed much critical press within today’s scholarly disciplines. Rarely, however, have scholars integrated these individual observations to probe the shared European legacy of proof. This conference seeks […]

by the Past & Present editorial team