Histories from Here
Through our blog series, Histories from Here, the Modern British Studies Association is committed to publishing work that is relevant, accessible, rigorous, respectful and diverse.
We welcome reflections on scholarship relating to modern Britain from a diversity of vantage points and positions – in terms of positionality, career stage, life course, physical location, ideological stance and methodology.
Submissions are based on original research, broadly defined to include work conducted within the academy, heritage sites and bodies, and community organisations.
If you have an idea for a blog post or another kind of feature, please get in touch with us using the enquiry form below or directly at blog@modbritstud.org.uk.
Why do you need more lawyers in your (historical) life?
Katherine Milliken
I spoke at the recent (and excellent) Modern British Studies Association conference in Birmingham as part of a panel on ‘New Legal Histories of Late Modern Britain, c,1970-2010’ and advocated for the importance of the exploration of the civil legal system and its interactions with wider society and for doing so through the lens of the legal profession.
History from here – the political ‘here’
Rebecca Goldsmith
What does it mean to write history in our current political climate? The questions we ask as historians are inevitably shaped by the landscape we collectively inhabit, and our individual vantage points on that landscape. The imprint of present politics on history writing can nevertheless be more or less easy to detect.
Indigenous Histories from ‘Here’
Caitlin Harvey
King Charles III’s coronation in 2023 brought hundreds of Indigenous leaders from the Commonwealth to Britain, showcasing some of the Crown’s oldest diplomatic ties outside of Europe. It wasn’t the first time that Indigenous peoples had represented their interests on British soil.
Between British and Global History? Researching International Solidarity Movements
Owen Dowling
Throughout my doctoral research on anti-imperialism and international solidarity politics among the British New Left of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, I have often wrestled with the question of the “umbrella” under which my research falls — ‘modern British history’, or ‘world history’.
Notes from the North of Ireland
Kieran Connell
In January 2015 I took up my first permanent academic job as a lecturer in contemporary British history at Queen’s University Belfast. A few months earlier I had made the trip over from Birmingham, where I had grown up, to house hunt. The taxi from George Best airport dropped me in the Ormeau Road area in the south of the city. “You’ll like it around here”, the driver told me. “It’s very mixed”.