Category Archives: WW1

First World War Acoustic Mirror Saved

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Fulwell Acoustic Mirror is a 4m high concave concrete dish, constructed on the coast at Fulwell, Sunderland. Completed in 1917, it was designed to act as an acoustic early warning system against air raids, after a bomb dropped by a Zeppelin over the Wheatsheaf area of Sunderland in April 1916 left 22 people dead and more than 100 injured.

After many years of neglect the acoustic mirror’s crumbling condition led to the structure being included on the Historic England (previously known as English Heritage) Heritage at Risk register. This triggered a partnership between Sunderland City Council, Historic England and the Heritage Lottery Fund programme – Limestone Landscapes, which has resulted in a glorious restoration, unveiled on 9 June 2015.

See here for the full story.

SCOLMA Annual Conference 2015: “There came a darkness”: Africa, Africans and World War I

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SCOLMA Annual Conference 2015: “There came a darkness”: Africa, Africans and World War I

Friday 17th July 2015, 9.15am – 5.00pm

Programme

9.15: Registration

9.30: Welcome

9.40: Keynote speech: Edward Paice
The Pike Report and Captain Caulfeild: Emerging Voices and Commemoration of the Great War in Africa

10.30: Coffee

10.50: Panel 1

10.50-11.10: Holgar Hansen, Copenhagen
Karen Blixen: a Danish view on the War in Africa

11.10-11.30: David Stuart-Mogg, Society of Malawi
Frederick Njilima, M.M.: an unlikely African hero of the Western Front

11.30-11.50: John Pinfold, Oxford and Alison Metcalfe, National Library of Scotland
The African Experience of the East African Campaign: some new oral and photographic evidence

11.50-12.00: Questions

12.00: Panel 2

12.00-12.20: Anne Samson, Independent Researcher
Duty to Empire? South Africa’s invasion of German South West Africa

12.20-12.40: Terry Barringer, Cambridge
“When you hear of wars and rumours of war”: reading about the War in Africa in missionary periodicals

12.40-1.00: Martin Plaut
Imagery of African Troops

1.00-1.10: Questions

1.10: Lunch

1.50: SCOLMA AGM

2.15: Panel 3

2.15-2.35: Daniel Steinbach, King’s College London
Colonial Encounters in War Photography by British Soldiers during the First World War in East Africa

2.35-2.55: Allyson Lewis, Essex County Record Office
The Forgotten Front – experiences of Essex men fighting in East Africa

2.55-3.15: Dan Gilfoyle, National Archives
Critical reading: the war diaries of the King’s African Rifles

3.15-3.30: Questions

3.30: Tea

3.50: Panel 4

3.50-4.10: Sarah Longair, British Museum
A fitting memento of Peace”: compromise and conflict in constructing Zanzibar’s Peace Memorial Museum

4.10-4.30: Ben Knighton, Oxford Centre for Mission Studies
Consequences of World War One for Empire in East Africa: Mission as political grievance among Christian Agikuyu, Kenya

4.30-4.50: Iris Wigge, Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University
The transnationality and intersectionality of Anti-Black racism in the aftermath of the Great War. Revisiting the ‘Black Horror’ Campaign.

4.50-5.00: Questions

5.00: Close

5.00-6.00: Reception

SCOLMA thanks the following for support for the conference: The British Library; Taylor and Francis; Adam Matthew.

Conference venue: The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB.

For more details, and to book, go to http://scolma.org/events/
or contact:
Terry Barringer
Email: TABarringe@aol.com

This programme is subject to change.

Seminar: ‘Marriage in crisis: WWI and behavioural change in Belgium’

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Dr. Saskia Hin, from the University of Leuven will present on ‘Marriage in crisis: WWI and behavioural change in Belgium.’

Seminar Series: “Historical Demography – A Place in Modern Demography?”

Oxford Institute of Population Ageing
Seminar Room, 66 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PR

Thursday, 4th June 2015 at 2.00pm

Convenor: Dr George Leeson

All are welcome to attend this seminar

7 War Memorials that Bear Witness to the Great Loss at Gallipoli

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On 25 April 1915, the Allied force launched amphibious landings on the Gallipoli Peninsular. The aim was to control the straits and capture Constantinople (now Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The Allied landings, which included French, Australian and New Zealand troops, were heavily opposed by Turkish forces and a trench warfare stalemate followed in extreme heat and appalling conditions. This eventually ended in a disastrous Allied defeat with over 250,000 casualties, including 58,000 dead. Turkish losses were heavier still.

These seven war memorials, are notable among the tens of thousands in every village, town and city in the country for their association with the Gallipoli campaign. Like all war memorials, they are tangible and poignant reminders of events a century ago.

For more information, see here.

How to write the Great War? Conference programme available

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How to write the Great War? Francophone and Anglophone Poetics

This international conference will take place from 1st-2nd May 2015, at Magdalen College / Maison Française d’Oxford.

Download the conference programme: WWI.Affiche programme internet (rev)

Register here.

Soldats écrivant Flickr 4

Trinity Term 2015 – Research Seminars in the History of Medicine, Oxford

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Trinity Term 2015 Seminar Series: Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine
Seminar Room, 47 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6PE

The following seminars will be held at on Mondays at 2.15pm
Coffee will be available from 2.00pm

‘Medicine and Modern Warfare’, Convener: Dr Roderick Bailey

Week 1 – 27 April
Ben Shephard, Bristol
‘Culture, politics or biology? How does American PTSD relate to European war trauma?’

Week 2 – 4 May
Bank Holiday – No Seminar

Week 3 – 11 May
Emily Mayhew, Imperial College London and Daffyd Edwards, Centre for Blast Injury Studies, Imperial College London
‘From the Western Front to Field Hospital Camp Bastion: How the foundations of military medicine in the 21st Century were laid in the Great War’

Week 4 – 18 May
Roderick Bailey, University of Oxford
‘Permanent make-up: Body modification and wartime disguise, 1939-45’

Week 5 – 25 May
Bank Holiday – No Seminar

Week 6 – 1 June
Ulf Schmidt, University of Kent
‘Secret science: A century of poison warfare and human experiments’

Week 7 – 8 June
Hazel Croft, Birkbeck, University of London
‘“It would frighten you to see the people sent to this place”: Why did the emotional and nervous states of women factory workers provoke such concern in Britain in the Second World War?’

Week 8 – 15 June
Sam Alberti, Royal College of Surgeons, London
‘Drawing bodies: British medical art in the early-twentieth century’

Extended deadline: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership – IWM & Queen Mary University of London.

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The deadline for the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership between the IWM and Queen Mary University of London has been extended. The studentship topic is A review of the worldwide effects and impact of Spanish Influenza, 1918-1919, based on IWM’s medical collections and will commence on 1 October 2015.

Download the advertisement: IWM CDP Spanish Influenza
There is more information here.

The deadline for applications is Friday 8 May, 2015 at 5pm.