Received from Dr. Becca Grose and Dr. Alex Traves (University of York) Conference Taking Place: 1–2 June 2023, University of York, King’s Manor Thursday 1st June 2023 Registration 12.30-1pm   Session 1 – 1pm-2.40pm “Dissolving the Paternity of Children Born to Slave Mothers in the Early Middle Ages.” Erin Dailey, University of Leicester. “Wet-nurses in early medieval narratives: bonds of affection, ties of servitude.” Katherine Cross, York St John/University of York. “Kinship Ties and Enslavement in Early Medieval England: Continuity or Dissolvement?.” Alex Traves, University of York. Break – 2.40-3.10 pm  Session 2 – 3.10 pm-4.40pm “The power in (not) dissolving kinship in fifth-century North Africa.” Becca Grose, University of York. “Cutting Ties: Death, inheritance, and paternal abdication in Islamicate geographical accounts of the Rūs.” Tonicha Upham, Aarhus University. VIRTUAL. “Denying Kinship; Claiming Land: Kinship, Property, and Power in Early Medieval India, ca. 300–800 CE.” Mekhola Gomes, Amherst College. VIRTUAL. Break- 4.40pm-5pm Plenary – 5pm    “”If anyone wishes to cast off their kindred, let them go to the assembly…” Kinship, community, and identity in the post-imperial West.’” Guy Halsall, University of York. Reception – 6-6:45pm Dinner – TBC Friday 2nd June 2023 Session 1 – 9am-10:40am “Eternal kinship of the […]

Received from Dr. Samuel Agbamu (Reading) and Dr. Elena Giusti (Warwick) Dates: 22nd – 24th June 2023 Location: Museum of Civilisations, 14 Piazza Guglielmo Marconi 00144 Roma Italy Registration Overview This conference will interrogate the roles of the ancient Greek and Latin worlds in the formulation of Italian colonial discourses, and its impacts on the cultural landscape of postcolonial Italy and its former colonies. It will approach these subjects across three themes: Classics and Italian Colonialism; Italy, Classics and Postcolonialism; and Decolonising Classics in Italy. Each theme will have a number of research questions: 1. Classics and Italian Colonialism i. How has research into Greek and Roman antiquity contributed to the formulation of Italian colonial ideologies? ii. How has Classics in Italy supported projects to inscribe difference between ‘races’, nations, and religions, as well as between categories of coloniser and colonised? 2. Italy, Classics, and Postcolonialism i. How have people colonised and formerly colonised by Italy encountered the classical tradition? ii. How have the literary cultures of Italy’s former colonies interacted with postcolonial Italian literature? 3. Classics and Postcolonialism i. How have classicists across the world sought to interrogate and undo the complicities between the discipline and the legacies of […]

by the Past & Present editorial team Every year we invite the Postdoctoral Fellows that we sponsor at the Institute of Historical Research in London to curate a “Virtual Issue” of the journal. Each issue commences with an introduction by the Fellow(s) who have curated the issue exploring the historiographical concerns, trends and currents that they have picked out from their reading of back issues of the journal. This introduction is then followed by a series of (free to read) articles that they have chosen which have been published on their chosen theme throughout the more than seventy year period that Past and Present has been published. The Society’s 2021 – 23 Fellows Dr. Tamara Fernando, Dr. Felice Physioc and Dr. Alexis Rider have curated a virtual issue called the Flows of History. Exploring the historiograpy of water as presented in Past and Present. They write: “What does it mean to write the history of water? In this virtual issue we set out to explore how articles published in Past and Present, a journal of social history, have addressed the topic of water through time, with a caveat that several important conversations on water have also taken place in other scholarly […]

by Dr. Devika Shankar (University of Hong Kong) Across the world, the expansion of port infrastructure in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was accompanied by the marginalization of other economic activities, including fishing. In southwestern India, the clash between the needs of fishing and shipping was especially acute because of the regular use of fishing stakes by local communities. Fishing with stakes involved tying nets to pairs of stakes that were planted in the beds of various water bodies. As shipping traffic increased during this period, many British officials saw these stakes as impediments to the free movement of people and commodities around the region’s port cities. Growing pressure from shipping interests especially from Bombay, the region’s most significant port, had prompted the government to pass the obstruction to fairways act in 1881 in order to restrict the use of stakes around harbours. Throughout the late 19th century, the colonial administration would continue to use a variety of means to further restrict the placement of stakes in the region, but while conducting research on a harbour development project in Cochin, another important port in southwestern India where the use of stakes was common, I realised that the regulation […]

Overview Dates and Times: 12:30 27th June 2023 – 19:00 28th June 2023 (UK time) Location: University of Glasgow / Online Provisional Programme This workshop, focusing on Indigenous histories of enslavement and displacement, is one of the first of its kind in the UK, and it aims to bring Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous histories to greater attention of students and researchers and highlight the ways in which these histories have traditionally been sublimated by the majority of historical subdisciplines. This workshop speaks to urgent questions about the exclusion of Indigenous peoples and perspectives from mainstream academic scholarship and aims to promote Indigenous histories in the UK, to address the afterlives of Indigenous enslavement and ongoing process of settler colonialism, and to consider the legacies of these histories in the UK today. We seek to make space for researchers – especially researchers who are Indigenous from postcolonial and contemporary settler states – to discuss the histories and legacies created by forced migrations and the critical fissures created by colonial pasts and presents. This space is intended to bring together historians and interdisciplinary scholars of Indigenous histories, broadly defined, from around the world, and for it to be the start of an ongoing conversation about Indigenous […]

Received from Clara Dijkstra (Christ’s College, Cambridge) Date: 10th-11th May 2023 Location: The Wiener Holocaust Library, London (WC1B 5DP) Co-convenors: Dr Barbara Warnock, The Wiener Holocaust Library, Clara Dijkstra, The Wiener Holocaust Library and University of Cambridge, Dr Celia Donert, University of Cambridge This two-day, in-person symposium, organised by The Wiener Holocaust Library and the University of Cambridge, will be held at the Library 10 – 11 May 2023. It will bring together early career researchers and senior academics to discuss new directions in the study of the Roma genocide. Day 1 10:00 – 11:30: Panel 1, Microhistory (1) Chair: Celia Donert Grégoire Cousin: ‘The fate of the Roma deported to Suha-Balca farm: writing a collective history of the victims’ Anna Míšková: “The Return Unwanted’, the story of one family against the background of Nazi persecution in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’ Paula Simon: ‘A mosaic of sources: Writing a microhistory of the Samudaripen in Niš, Serbia’ 11:45 – 13:15: Panel 2, Microhistory (2) Chair: Barbara Warnock Petre Matei: ‘Roma women’s petitions to rescue their deported families: A case study from Romania’ Michala Lônčíková: “Detention Camp for Gypsies’ in Dubnica nad Váhom in the Romani testimonies from the compensation files of Slovakia’ Laura Stoebener: ‘Thirteen Dossiers: Survivors […]

Overview Dates and Times: 12:30 27th June 2023 – 19:00 28th June 2023 (UK time) Location: University of Glasgow / Online This workshop, focusing on Indigenous histories of enslavement and displacement, is one of the first of its kind in the UK, and it aims to bring Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous histories to greater attention of students and researchers and highlight the ways in which these histories have traditionally been sublimated by the majority of historical subdisciplines. This workshop speaks to urgent questions about the exclusion of Indigenous peoples and perspectives from mainstream academic scholarship and aims to promote Indigenous histories in the UK, to address the afterlives of Indigenous enslavement and ongoing process of settler colonialism, and to consider the legacies of these histories in the UK today. We seek to make space for researchers – especially researchers who are Indigenous from postcolonial and contemporary settler states – to discuss the histories and legacies created by forced migrations and the critical fissures created by colonial pasts and presents. This space is intended to bring together historians and interdisciplinary scholars of Indigenous histories, broadly defined, from around the world, and for it to be the start of an ongoing conversation about Indigenous […]

received from Dr. Guillemette Crouzet (European University Institute) and Dr. Eva Miller (University College London) Dates: 25th – 26th May 2023 Times: 10:00 – 18:15 (25th May) 9:30 – 18:30 (26th May) Location: Occulus 0.04, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL Programme (html) Programme (pdf.) Registration Registration is required for attendance at the conference. There is a small conference fee of £5. The conference will be in person only. The final panel discussion, ‘Whose Heritage?’ is open to all and does not require registration. Overview Since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 with a cadre of scientific experts, the Middle East has been framed as the cradle of the world past: the place where civilization began, burgeoning with antiquities, where ancient history was visible in the landscape—or could be made so through the right kind of labour. This framing continues to affect heritage politics and international relations in the region. This conference explores how historical consciousness about the Middle East was reshaped in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and new senses of its ancient past forged through excavation and exegesis of traces of ancient civilisations. How did the emerging disciplines of archaeology and ancient history shape the modern region? How […]

Received from Dr. Becca Grose and Dr. Alex Traves (University of York) Key Details Date: 1st-2nd June 2023 Location: University of York Confirmed participants external to the University of York: Catherine Cubitt (UEA); Erin Dailey (Leicester), Rachel Stone (Bedfordshire & KCL) Event Abstract Kinship is often treated as a social phenomenon that binds people together permanently through the creation of mutual ties, obligations, and emotions between individuals. Over the last decades, work on family and kinship in the early Middle Ages has addressed the basis of this claim through considering two key issues: i) how new types of kinship ties emerged in the early Middle Ages; ii) how far early-medieval kinship was derived from spiritual or blood ties. However, kinship can also be used to separate as much as bring together, and kinship ties were not always as permanent as might be inferred. The moments where kinship ties were considered to cease offer us the opportunity to investigate how these conceptual differences might shape or be expressed in social behaviour. By considering the extent to which moments of imposed (or initiated) separation can be considered dissolvement of kinship ties, our workshop addresses two related issues. First, our workshop seeks to […]

by Annabel Hancock (St. John’s College, Oxford) After over a year of preparation, the conference took place on 13-14th January 2023 in the Oxford History Faculty, and it was a great success! We were thrilled to welcome five eminent keynote speakers as well as 26 speakers and 20 attendees. Attendance was truly international with speakers from the US, Taiwan, Israel, Australia, The Netherlands, and Spain, to name a few places. There were also participants from a range of career stages with a large number of postgraduate students and ECRs speaking alongside renowned professors. Programme details can be found here. The call for papers generated a much greater response than expected, from researchers at a variety of career stages and disciplines. While it led to greater organisational challenges, this led to the decision to run parallel sessions, allowing the acceptance of a greater number of papers and wider conversations. This meant we had panels which focused on trust as an emotion and experience, on trust and its relationship to power, to professions, in trade, credit, and debt relationships, and in spaces and systems. The keynote speakers acted perfectly to direct the focus of the conference and encourage wide-ranging discussions. Dr Justyna […]