Category Archives: Events and Conferences

GLGW event: From Aotearoa to Oxford: Commemorating the New Zealand soldiers buried at Botley Cemetery

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Saturday 8th October 2016
1.45 – 4.30pm

A FREE event, to which everyone is welcome

From: 1:45 – 2:45pm
Botley Cemetery, Oxford OX2 0LX
A commemoration of New Zealand soldiers and their role in the First World War
In the presence of the New Zealand High Commissioner
His Excellency The Right Honourable Sir Lockwood Smith KNZM
Accompanied by, Brigadier Evan Williams, NZ Defence Advisor,
New Zealand Defence Force

Followed by, from: 2:45 – 4:30pm
Botley WI Hall, North Hinksey Lane, Oxford OX2 0LT
(Opposite the cemetery entrance)
Refreshments, an exhibition and short talks on how and why New Zealanders came to be buried at Botley

Download flyer here: aotearoaflyer210916
Download programme for the day here: fullcolourprogramme

Supported by:
Funding from the Commonwealth Graves Commission‘s Living Memory project, which remembers the “forgotten front” – the 300,000 war graves and commemorations right here in the UK
The Faculty of History, University of Oxford
University of Oxford Botanic Garden
TORCH, The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities
66 Men of Grandpont
Botley Women’s Institute
Big Ideas Company

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‘Unknown Stories of the Great War’, Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum, 17 Sept. 2016

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To coincide with the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme (1 July-18 November 1916), Oxfordshire families are urged to bring First World War photographs, letters, diaries and objects to tell their stories at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock on Saturday 17th September between 10am and 4.30pm.

Experts from the Soldiers of Oxford­shire Museum, the Western Front Association and other organisations will be on hand to talk to visitors about the significance of their memorabilia and to help them find out more.

Living historians will be giving demonstrations and there will be displays, activities for children, support for researching a soldier and refreshments available.

This event is supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Entry to the museum will be free on the day, though donations would be appreciated.

The Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum
Park Street
Woodstock
OX20 1SN
T: 01993 810 210

Download poster of the event: Unknown Stories of the Great War

Fraenkel Prize Lecture: Hello to All That: Catholicism in Germany and Austria-Hungary during the First World War

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The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide
Wednesday 14 September 2016, 6:30pm – 8pm

Offering a more nuanced approach to religious belief during the Great War, Patrick J. Houlihan‘s talk shares research from his book analyzing the lived religion of everyday Catholic belief beyond stark dichotomies. Houlihan’s book, Catholicism and the Great War, which received the Fraenkel Prize in 2015, illuminates the spectrum of belief and unbelief during the Great War, thus revising master narratives of secularization and modernism that dominate the First World War’s cultural history. This book highlights the comparative relevance for the trajectories of Central Europe’s Protestants, Catholics, and Jews into the cataclysm of the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Catholicism and the Great War

Dr. Patrick J. Houlihan is Research Fellow in History at the University of Oxford. He received his PhD in History from the University of Chicago in 2011. Since 2016, he is a member of Oxford’s “Globalising and Localising the Great War” project, particularly its focus on Global Religions, which has received major multi-year funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom. His publications include Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), the manuscript of which was awarded in 2015 the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History from the Wiener Library.

Admission is free but booking is advised as space is limited. Please visit our What’s On page to reserve your ticket

Contact Info:
The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide
29 Russell Square
London
WC1B 5DP
www.wienerlibrary.co.uk

Call for volunteers: ‘FWW Family Day’, Museum of Oxford, 1 August 2016

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The Museum of Oxford has an exciting opportunity for PhDs or postdocs interested in a very short-term community engagement project. They’re hosting a “FWW Family Day” on August 1st, and are looking for some help in planning the activities and writing information sheets. The museum is centrally located in the Town Hall (right near Carfax Tower).

This would at most involve attending four short planning sessions before August 1st, with optional (but very welcome) attendance on the day itself. A good opportunity for anyone looking to add some FWW-related community engagement to their CV.

They are fairly desperate for assistance with this, and we’re hoping that with such a strong community of FWW experts in Oxford, including ~20 PhDs and postdocs, that someone will be able to help them out!

If interested, please contact Chloe Cadge at the Museum of Oxford, ccadge@oxford.gov.uk.

Film screening: 66 Men of Grandpont 1914-1918, 22 June 2016, 14.00, Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College

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A film screening of 66 Men of Grandpont 1914-1918: A Short Documentary Film by Simon Haynes and Liz Woolley will take place on Wednesday 22 June 2016, from 14.00-15.45 in the Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College.

DVD cover, front, back and spine

66 Men of Grandpont 1914-1918 is a community history project, which commemorates the 66 men who are named on the First World War memorial in St Matthew’s Church in Grandpont, South Oxford.

The project, which has been part-funded by the University’s Community Fund, has involved the development of a large website, a touring exhibition, a poppy trail around the streets of Grandpont and, most recently, a 40-minute documentary film which was launched at the Town Hall recently. The film explores the impact of the First World War on one small and ordinary suburban community, but also describes Oxford during the period and emphasises the links between local and international history. It is therefore of interest not only to local residents, but to a much wider audience as well. One of the project coordinators’ additional aims is to provide a model for other groups wishing to carry out similar projects, by explaining how they went about the research.

Talk: Armenia: Life and Study of an Enduring Culture, 9 June 7:00pm – Harold Lee Room, Pembroke College

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Silence can be full of words
and words full of silence

Suzan Meryem Kalayci
(PhD Candidate, European University, Florence)

Reminiscent of John Cage’s 4’33, Suzan Meryem Rosita will read a blank book in complete silence for 19 Minutes and 15 Seconds (19’15). We will be reminded that sometimes silence speaks louder than words. After the reading, the book will be passed around and the audience will be able to fill its pages, or leave them as empty and silent as they are.

Suzan Meryem Rosita will also tell us about her The Silent Book initiative which revolves around the premise that “silence can be full of words, but words can be full of silence.” She believes that the absence of voices can offer a powerful space for atonement, redemption and grief in the context of national trauma.

This initiative distributed blank but marked books (that is marked with page numbers) with the title [armenian genocide] to private and local libraries or educational initiatives and aimed at encouraging their readers not only to participate in discussions about the Armenian Genocide but also to challenge common notions of reading and writing — the way we read and accept certain ‘truths’ presented within published texts. The project was censored in Turkey but nevertheless gained momentum locally and internationally as an anonymous movement of reading and writing about the genocide. Reading and discussion groups were formed, student exchanges (with Armenian and Turkish students) organized and art exhibitions curated.

http://civilnet.am/2015/04/18/armenian-genoside-silient-book-suzan-meryem-rosita/#.Vq-d_2QrJxi
(Report by Civilnet about the publication of the first official silent book)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2T3MN1w2T0&feature=youtu.be
(Video of the “The Silent Book”, Performance at the Gazing Through Memory Festival, 22. April 2015, Cafesjian Center for the Arts, Yerevan.)

Suzan Meryem Kalayci: biography

Poster: 06. TT16 AGBU KALAYCI

This is the sixth lecture in a series sponsored by the Armenian General Benevolent Union, London Branch. The series commemorates the Armenian Genocide begun in 1915 and celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the establishment of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship in Armenian Studies at Pembroke College, University of Oxford in 1965.

Symposium: Nova Scotia and the Great War Revisited: Cultural Communities, Memory and the First World War

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It has been 100 years since the “war to end all wars”, from 1914 to 1918. Come hear academic, museum, community and youth speakers share ideas and discuss new research on the little-known contributions of cultural communities in Nova Scotia to the conflict. Explore different community views on the importance of commemoration and memory of the experience of the First World War. See how local Nova Scotian contributions fit in the larger Atlantic Canadian, national and international contexts.

Presentations Include
• No. 2 Construction Battalion in July 1916: Importance for African Nova Scotians
• Experiences of the Mi’kmaq, Acadian and Gaelic Nova Scotian communities
• Child soldiers
• The Jewish Legion at Fort Edward in Windsor

Youth Panels
Vimy Foundation participants and Avon View High School

Why is the memory of the Great War still important to students and youth today?

Keynote Speakers
Jonathan Vance, University of Western Ontario
The First World War, Memory and Popular Culture in Canada

Sean Cadigan, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Myth, Memory and the First World War in Atlantic Canadian communities

Friday, June 10th 2016, 12pm to 7:30pm and Saturday, June 11th 2016, 9am to 7pm

Hants County War Memorial Community Centre, 78 Thomas St., Windsor, NS

Full program: http://www.smu.ca/webfiles/Symposiumschedule.pdf

Free Admission, All welcome.

Register in advance:
Online: http://www.smu.ca/NSFirstWorldWar
Phone: 902-420-5668
Email: gorsebrook@smu.ca

Contact Info:
Organized by the Nova Scotia Museum, Saint Mary’s University Gorsebrook Research Institute, Centre d’études acadiennes, Université de Moncton, Army Museum Halifax Citadel, and Parks Canada.