Historian and geographer, writer and researcher
We've had a quick look at some of the stories and statistics behind the Irish in the Black Country, particularly focusing on the census data for 1851. Data is an essential part of the story, but it is just a part. The historian can do loads with that, but it stops being interesting before too long: …
Continue reading "Black Country Irish: lies, damned lies and statistics"
A break from the Irish this week. I've been mostly reading Doreen Massey this week - if you're not familiar with her she's an urban geographer of major importance, who died earlier in the year (2016 striking again). She was a radical, a feminist, an unorthodox Marxist, and one of the best at problematising what …
I was very fortunate recently to get to camp in one of the most beautiful spots in the country, in the Elan Valley, Powys. It's among the most sparsely-populated parts of the UK, falling within what John Henry Cliffe described as 'that great desert of Wales' as far back as 1860. Despite that descriptor, it's far from …
As I mentioned recently, apparently historians love pubs more than anything. I was particularly intrigued by a discussion with Nathan Booth at the Urban History conference in Cambridge about the internal layout of pubs in his recently-completed thesis on Stalybridge - I hadn't given this a lot of thought, focusing mainly on the streetscape. So …
Continue reading "Foucault in Northfield: Birmingham’s reformed pubs"
I came into academia via a fairly circuitous route. After a degree in sound engineering (which I left pretty sure I never wanted to enter a recording studio again; although it did introduce me to some unexpected concepts like dada which, oddly enough, is resurfacing in some of my recent reading), I ended up temping in a …
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach. I never realised that, like party politics, academia has a conference season. At least, March appears to be it which means I've ended up with far too much work to do in one …
On the night of 25th September 1940, a middle-aged German-Jewish academic took his own life with an overdose of morphine in the Hotel de Francia, Portbou, on the Spanish side of the Pyrennean border. He'd been hoping to flee to America following the Nazi invasion of Paris where he'd been working in exile on a variety …
Continue reading "“History breaks down into images not into stories”"
Yesterday I attended a digital tools workshop at the University of Warwick, and very worthwhile it was too. Sticking 'digital' in front of anything is a recipe for sexy-sounding academia at the mo - digital history, digital humanities etc. - and I think tools like those highlighted at DiRT Directory can offer a fantastic way of …
At the age of 33, I recently had my first proper experience of camping (my subconscious has all but blocked the ramshackle Cub camps of my youth, although a few excursions in a refurbished caravan a couple of years ago helped). It was quite lovely, and afforded much opportunity for reading - I dipped between Lefebvre …
Continue reading "Camping, privies, and mapping the everyday"
Disclaimer: I'm no expert on American history, not at all. I'm keen that any theory I want to study be portable though, so I'm attempting here to look at a TV series I've been re-visiting through a particular lens. No Black Country history here either, we're in half-baked theory territory. Spoilers ahoy as well, if you …
