Category: Christian O’Connell

Summer Updates

While the summer is a time of much needed rest and recuperation, for academics it is also a time for research. As you’ll see in the updates from each member of staff below, staff in History team have…

Our Staff and Students at Heritage Schools Conference

Today at Oxstalls campus in Gloucester, myself and two of our students Ross Brown and Kelly Burriss took part in the Heritage Schools Conference. The event was organised by Voices Gloucester, the organization that is sharing diverse stories…

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Harry Belafonte (1927-2023)

Emeritus Professor of 20th c. US History Neil Wynn pays tribute after the singer and activist’s death this week. “There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, there’s a hole in my bucket …”  So began…

Report from History Trip to Italy

At the end of March, students from History as well as other courses in Humanities visited Rome, Naples and Pompeii over six days. The weather was kind to us as we averaged between twenty to thirty-thousand steps per…

New Academic Year and New Colleagues

Welcome new and welcome back returning students! We are looking forward to kicking off the new academic year with you all. There is lots going on already via City Voices at the Gloucester History Festival with our student…

Exploring Gloucester’s Hidden Links to the Slave Trade

In the summer of 2020, Gloucester City Council set up a race relations commission charged with reviewing the links between the city’s monuments and the transatlantic slave trade (see here).  Over the past year, I have been a…

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Presidential Debates: then and now

The first of the three scheduled presidential debates between the Republican incumbent, Donald Trump, and the Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, was notable for its lack of actual debate.  Described by CNN as “the most rancorous debate in history”,…

‘The Past is Not Dead’ – Confronting the British Past in the wake of Black Lives Matter

Recent events have really put our discipline on the front pages. The Black Lives Matter protests which have swept across the United States and Europe following the brutal murder of George Floyd, have seen statues of controversial historical…

‘I Can’t Breathe’ – Race Conflict in the USA 2020

For American historians, and particularly those who focus on African American history and civil rights, the feelings felt in the last six days are a mixture of sorrow, anger, .. and also déjà vu.  How often in the…

Historians in Lockdown (Part Two)

This is the second of two posts by our academic staff who share their experiences of working from home and adapting to the ‘new normal’ since the start of the lockdown. This post sees contributions from early modernist…