Category: Christian O’Connell

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…

Discovering the Blues: honouring the work of Paul Oliver

On Friday 7th February, I took part in an event entitled ‘Discovering the Blues: Paul Oliver and the Blues’, held at Oxford Brookes University as part of the Thinking Human Festival. The event was held to commemorate the…

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Postgraduate Profile: Oliver Brown

This post comes from MA by Research student and undergraduate alumni, Oliver Brown. My research is investigating the prevalence of anti-Semitism in the British right-wing between 1918 and 1930. It aims to redress the studies conducted on British…

The Challenge of Building a National Museum

On Tuesday 25th June I attended the 24th Annual DW Bryant Lecture at the Eccles Centre for American Studies in the British Library. This year’s speaker was Lonnie G Bunch III, the director of the Smithsonian’s new National…

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Christian O’Connell receives International History Review Research Award

The history blog has been relatively quiet of late, somewhat reflective of the busy marking period that characterises May and June of the academic year. However, I’m happy to break the radio silence by reporting the welcome news…