Category Archives: Events and Conferences

Workshop: Writing the First World War

Posted on by

The Quick and the Dead: Fallen Soldiers and their Families

Saturday, 22 September 2018, 10:00 to 17:00
John Henry Brookes Building, Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane site

This interactive day will draw on the extensive experience of bestselling author and well-known historian of the Great War, Richard van Emden.

It will cover many aspects of non-fiction writing from clarifying what sort of book you want to write, how to build a narrative and getting published. It’s suitable for anyone, published or aspiring, who’s writing or wanting to write about the First World War.

Also taking part will be Stephen Barker, author of Lancashire’s Forgotten Heroes.

Cost: £65 (including tea/coffee and lunch) or £60 for Western Front Association members.

For more information contact: hss-shortcourses@brookes.ac.uk
Further information and how to book, see here.

Conference: Colonial and Wartime Migration, 1815-1918

Posted on by

13 and 14 September 2018
Université de Picardie Jules Verne
Amiens, Logis du Roy
CORPUS (EA 4295)
https://colonialandwartimemigration18151918.wordpress.com/

Wednesday 12 September
Reception at Amiens City Hall at 6:30pm

Thursday 13 September (Logis du Roy)

9:00-9:15: Introduction: Marie Ruiz

9:15-10:15: Keynote Address
Eric Richards (Flinders University, Australia) – “Migration at Extremes”

10:15-10:45: Discussion

10:45-11:00: Coffee break

11:00-12:00: Panel 1: Exceptional Migration Patterns (Chair: Laura Sims)
Bernard Porter (Newcastle University, UK) – “British colonial migration in the 19th century. The Short Route”
James Hammerton (LaTrobe University, Australia) – “’Empire made me?’: English lower middle-class migrants and expatriates, 1860-1930.”

12:00-12:30: Discussion

12:30-1:30pm: Lunch

1:30pm-2:30pm: Panel 2: Scottish Migration (Chair: Yann Béliard)
John MacKenzie (Lancaster University, UK) – “Early nineteenth century war and the distinctive Scottish Diaspora”
Marjory Harper (University of Aberdeen, UK) – “”The hands of the clock have begun to move backwards”: postwar emigration from Scotland”

2:30–3:00pm: Discussion

3:00–4:00pm: Panel 3: Ireland, the Great War and New Zealand (Chair: Marianne Kac-Vergne)
David Fitzpatrick (Trinity College, Ireland) – “Irish Migration and the Great War”
Jim McAloon (Victoria University, New Zealand) – “Irish immigrants and the middle class in colonial New Zealand 1890-1910”

4:00–4:30pm: Discussion

Friday 14 September (Logis du Roy)

9:30-10:30: Panel 4: Labour Migration (Chair: Géraldine Vaughan)
Fabrice Bensimon (Université Paris-Sorbonne) – “British Labour and Migration to Europe during Industrialisation (1815-1860). The Case of the Lace Makers”
Yann Beliard (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) – “Migration to and from Hull, and its impact on the labour movement, 1840s-1914”

10:30-11:00: Discussion

11:00-11:30: Coffee break

11:30-12:30: Panel 5: Religious Migration (Chair: Aurélie Thiria)
Hillary Carey (University of Bristol, UK) – “Clergy for Convicts: Religion, Emigration and the Convict Probation System in New South Wales”
Géraldine Vaughan (université de Rouen – IUF) – “‘Promote Protestant emigration!’: John Dunmore Lang, Religious Immigration and Imperial Identities in the Mid-Victorian era”

12:30-1:00pm: Discussion

1:00-2:30pm: Lunch

2:30-3:30pm: Panel 6: The Empire and WWI: Canadians and Kiwis (Chair: Frédérique Spill)
Kent Fedorowich (University of the West of England, UK) – “The ‘Sawdust Fusiliers’: The Canadian Forestry Corps, 1916-1919”
Adam Cutforth (France-New Zealand Association) – “‘There and back again’: an ANZAC’s round-trip to the Western Front”

3:30-4:00pm: Discussion

4:00-4:15pm: Coffee break

4:15–5:15pm: Panel 7: Migrant Representations of WWI (Chair: Nathalie Saudo-Welby)
Edward Higgs (University of Essex, UK) – “Spirit photography as war photography, and migration across the Great Divide”
Santanu Das (King’s College London, UK) – “South Asian Troops in Europe, 1914-1918 – Image, Song, Literature”

5:15-5:45pm: Discussion

5:45pm: End of Conference

To End All Wars? Geopolitical Aftermath and Commemorative Legacies of the First World War

Posted on by

August 22, 2018 to August 25, 2018
Ieper, Belgium

At the end of 1914 H. G. Wells published The War That Will End War, a collection of patriotic essays justifying Britain’s participation in the war. The title sounds familiar as it was taken up later on in other contexts, particularly by the British prime minister David Lloyd George and the American president Woodrow Wilson (‘the war to end (all) wars’).

With To End All Wars? the In Flanders Fields Museum (Ypres) and CEGESOMA (Brussels) once again return to this historic title for a multi-day conference, to tackle two questions: what were the consequences of the new geopolitical order installed after this so-called ‘last war’, and how is the legacy of both war and post-war order remembered up to the present day?

Taking worldwide perspectives, this unique and prestigious conference brings together international specialists including Jay Winter, Nicolas Offenstadt, Carole Fink, Stefan Berger, Bruce Scates, Pieter Lagrou, Piet Chielens and many others. They will discuss and reflect upon the consequences of the new geopolitical order that came into being after the First World War, and how that war and its legacy have been remembered up to the present day.

See here for full conference details and to register.

Museums, Collections & Conflict, 1500-2010 – MGHG Biennial Conference 2018 Provisional Programme

Posted on by

13-14 July 2018, National Maritime Museum

Tickets can be purchased online here. For discounted conference tickets and access to the Museums History Journal, membership of the Museums and Galleries History Group can be purchased online here at a rate of £15 for students, £20 for individuals and £35 for institutions. MGHG Membership runs from 1 February to 1 February each year.

MGHG members: £40 / non-members: £70 / MGHG student members: £25 / student non-members: £40

Friday 13 July 2018

9.30 – 10.00 – Registration and tea/coffee

10.00 – 10.10 – Introduction (Kate Hill, Chair of MGHG)

10.10 – 12.10 – Panel 1: New insights into the history of the Imperial War Museum

Chair: James Wallis (University of Essex) Discussant: James Taylor (IWM London)

James Wallis (University of Essex) – The Imperial War Museum’s First World War galleries – a space of conflict?
Anna Maguire (King’s College London) – Researching Colonial Experience in the Collections of the Imperial War Museums
Kasia Tomasiewicz (University of Brighton & IWM) – Methods in the Museum: Reflections on Positionality within the Imperial War Museum

12.10 – 13.10 – Lunch (not provided) – postgraduate students lunch session for pre-registered participants only

13.10 – 14.40 – Panel 2: Museums in Wartime I: Protecting museums and objects

Anna Tulliach (University of Leicester) – Assessing the war issue at the Civic Museum of Bologna (1915-1945)
Zoé Vannier (École du Louvre) – Managing a collection “far from drums’ sound”: The evacuation and management of the Near Eastern Antiquities department of the Louvre Museum during World War II
Eva March (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona) – The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and Catalan art museums

14.40 – 15.10 – Tea/Coffee

15.10 – 16.40 – Panel 3: Politics of curating and displaying war

Quintin Colville (Royal Museums Greenwich) – Medals and masculinities: representing the First World War at sea through word and object
Bridget Yates (independent researcher) – ‘The present is pretty terrible, the future is unknown, the past is the only stable thing to which we can turn’: Philip Ashcroft, Rufford Village Museum and the preservation of rural life and tradition during the Second World War
Zoe Mercer-Golden (Royal Museums Greenwich) – Treasure, Triumph and Trespass: Curatorial Challenges in the Collecting and Display of “Priam’s Treasure”

17.40 – 17.00 – Break

17.00 – 18.00 – Keynote lecture: Prof Geoff Quilley (University of Sussex)

18.00 – 19.30 – Reception

Saturday 14 July

9.30 – 11.00 – Panel 4: Collecting during conflict

Simon Quinn (University of York) – British military antiquarianism and collecting during the campaign in Egypt, 1801
Nicholas Badcott (SOAS) – Collecting on campaign in Mahdist Sudan
Amanda Mason (IWM) – Collecting Contemporary Conflict at IWM

11.00 – 11.30 – Tea/coffee

11.30 – 13.00 – Panel 5: Museums in wartime II: Keeping museums going

Catherine Pearson (Anglia Ruskin University) – ‘I knew what I wanted to do and just went ahead’: The experiences of museum staff during the Second World War
Karin Müller-Kelwing (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden: Dresden State Art Collections) – Museum without objects?
Evelien Scheltinga (research-curator) – Dutch museums during World War 2

13.00 – 14.00 – Lunch (not provided) – selection of archival materials on view in Caird Library on history of the National Maritime Museum

14.00 – 14.30 – MGHG AGM

14.30 – 16.00 – Panel 6: History of War Museums

Jacqui Grainger (Royal United Services institute for Defence and Security Studies) – A Lost Museum: the RUSI Museum, 1831-1962
Phil Deans (Newcaslte University) – From A Museum on the World’s Last War, To a Museum on the Two World Wars: Crisis Management and reinvention at the Imperial War Musuem, 1939 – 1946
Melanie Vandenbrouk (Royal Museums Greenwich) – Two world wars and art at the National Maritime Museum

Conference closes

FWW Play: ‘Dear Chocolate Soldier’, SOFO, 6 June 2018, 19.00

Posted on by

A new First World War play, ‘Dear Chocolate Soldier. A docudrama based on the letters (1916-1918) of Bombardier Edwin Hassall’, presented by Historia Theatre Company, edited and arranged by Kate Glover and directed by Kenneth Michaels will tour from 31 May 2018.

On Wednesday 6 June, it will show at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum (SOFO), Woodstock.

It is June 1916. A 6 year old girl, Joan Burbridge, watches as her father wraps up a packet of chocolate for the brave soldiers at the front. A thought strikes her: ‘How will the soldier know the chocolate is from me?’ Her father obligingly writes on the packet: ‘From Little Joan, Whiterock, Wadebridge, Cornwall’.

Six weeks letter, a green field envelope arrives, addressed to Little Joan. Inside is a letter, sent direct from the fighting at the Somme, by Bombardier Edwin Hassall of Leek, Staffordshire. The story of the letters, from ‘The Chocolate Soldier’ to Little Joan, takes us to Armistice, and is told movingly and amusingly, by three actors, in a cabaret style performance with poetry and popular songs from the period.

For further details of the tour and to book tickets, please see here and also download the poster: DEAR CHOCOLATE SOLDIER Leek and Tour Leaflet

Event: Seeing War: War and Cultural Memory

Posted on by

Friday 25 May, St. Luke’s Chapel, TORCH, University of Oxford

The day will include a morning postgraduate seminar run by Laura Harrison, Rob Page, and Chris Kempshall, with readings circulated in advance. The afternoon includes a panel on Visualising War, with the photographer Jason Larkin discussing his project Past Perfect and the writer Robert Schultz talking about his collaborative project on memory of the American Civil War, War Memoranda. The keynote from Marita Sturken (whose work we read in our first seminar in Oxford) is on 9/11 memory, considering the the 9/11 memorial and the Flight 93 memorial comparatively. There’ll be a closing roundtable as usual featuring Mike Hammond. The venue this time is the lovely St. Luke’s Chapel on the Radcliffe Humanities site in Oxford.

The day is free and open to all and includes lunch, coffee and a reception. Please feel free to tweet about the event in advance using the hashtag #seeingwar

Registration is open; please register here.

Schedule
10.00: Coffee and Registration

10.15-12.00: Workshop led by ECRs – Rob Page, Laura Harrison, Chris Kempshall

12.00-13.00: Lunch

13.00-13.15: Opening Remarks – Alice Kelly

13.15-14.30: Panel: Visualising Conflict – Jason Larkin and Robert Schultz, chaired by Dominic Davies

14.30-15.00: Coffee

15.00-16.00: Keynote – Marita Sturken, chaired by Lucinda Borkett-Jones

16.00-17.00: Closing Roundtable – Marita Sturken, Michael Hammond, chaired by Alice Kelly

17.00: Wine Reception

For those of you on Twitter, check out the Twitter Takeover by Postgraduates and ECRs happening every week in the run up to this debate, featuring the Bright Young Things of war and memory studies. So far we’ve had week-long takeovers by Hanna Smyth, Louise Bell, Rob Page, Laura Harrison, and currently up is Jan Tattenberg. Still to come are Chris Kempshall, Eleanor Rowley and Doreen Pastor. Follow the conversation @cultcommwar

Talk: Music and Memory: composer Jonathan Dove in conversation with Dr Kate Kennedy

Posted on by

5:30pm to 7:00pm, Friday 27 April 2018
Lecture Theatre 3, Andrew Wiles Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG

In this conversation, composer Jonathan Dove will talk to Dr Kate Kennedy (University of Oxford) about the relationship of his music to war and remembrance. Jonathan Dove has written works commemorating armed conflict (In Damascus and To An Unknown Soldier) and works invoking collective memory more broadly, as in his TV opera When She Died, a reflection on the death of Princess Diana. The conversation will be illustrated with musical examples.

This event launches the Aural Commemoration strand of the Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Series 2017-18 Post-War: Commemoration, Reconstruction, Reconciliation, which brings together academics, creative practitioners, field-workers and policy experts to explore and compare the ways in which commemorative practices across cultures both contribute to and challenge post-war reconstruction and reconciliation.

This event is free to attend but registration is essential. Please register here.
Event poster: Music and Memory1