by Kate Smith (Conference Organiser) Past & Present is generously funding a conference on ‘Understanding Material Loss Across Time and Space’, which will take place at the University of Birmingham in February 2017 (registration is now open until 31st January 2017). Confirmed keynotes for the conference include, Prof. Pamela H. Smith, Dr. Simon Werrett, Prof. Maya Jasanoff, Prof. Jonathan Lamb, Prof. Anthony Bale and Dr. Astrid Swenson. In this blog post, the conference organizer Kate Smith reflects on how and why the conference emerged. As with many conferences and research projects engaged with understanding the past, Understanding Material Loss principally emerged from events and processes at work in the present. With the financial crisis of 2008, the large-scale displacement and migration of peoples, fears around water, food and energy resource scarcity, as well as increasingly urgent discussions about climate change and the Anthropocene, the contemporary moment seems to be filled with loss. Yet despite growing concerns over loss in the present, our understanding of how and when loss has been recognized as such, how humans have responded to it in the past and how such responses have shaped historic processes, remains opaque. In response Understanding Material Loss will bring together […]

By Junqing Wu (Organiser and Past & Present Junior Research Fellow) “Anticlericalism in comparative perspective: China and West Europe” will take place at the Institute of Historical Research on 8th October. The Workshop is kindly supported by the Past and Present Society and the Institute of Historical Research. The workshop seeks to explore the relationship between anticlerical discourse and the role of religion in society by putting anticlericalism in a broader historical and cultural context. It explores the topic of anticlericalism in a comparative manner; situating it as a critical element in social and cultural life of both China and western Europe. “Clergy” in the Chinese context means ordained Buddhist monks, nuns and Taoist priests, Buddhism and Taoism being the two main state-recognised institutional religions. In Europe, of course, it refers to the Christian priesthood and monastic orders. China and western Europe differed greatly in religious/ritual beliefs and practices, in the role of institutional religions and in the social status of the clergy, but anticlericalism existed in both cultures. Moreover, anticlerical satires in both cultures share certain motifs, including tropes of a lecherous and venal clergy. Is this historical coincidence, or an illustration of similar social forces at work? We […]

By Ellie Dobson & Nicola Tonks (Organising Committee) The third annual Birmingham Egyptology Symposium was held at the University of Birmingham in February 2016. The event was entitled ‘Ancient Egypt: Looking Out and Looking In’, and brought together Egyptologists at the University and Birmingham and elsewhere in order to share their research. Dr David Gange, a historian at the University of Birmingham whose work on the nineteenth-century development of disciplines such as Egyptology and archaeology is well known, gave the keynote address. A number of Dr Gange’s students were in attendance, and in the course of one particular panel, where the speakers hailed from historical backgrounds rather than Egyptology, it became apparent that the questions which historians had brought to the symposium were different from those raised by Egyptologists. This particular panel left us with more questions than answers about the ways in which ancient Egypt has been consumed, used, and appropriated by the British throughout history. While discussing the questions we had we light-heartedly suggested that perhaps we should organise our own conference seeking to address these questions: *Why has Egypt succeeded in capturing the popular imagination in ways that no other ancient civilisation has? *How did ancient Egypt […]