Women and the Army: One Hundred Years of Progress?

Author: janeclarke
Date: Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Section: Research

From the Old Comrades Association Gazette​, Vol VI, November 1925.

On 24 June, the National Army Museum held a conference entitled ‘Women and the Army: One Hundred Years of Progress?’ to commemorate the centenary of women’s entry into the armed forces. The conference brought together researchers as well as current servicewomen, with papers discussing women’s experiences in the military from 1917 to the present day.

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Working Lives and Memories of the Home Front

Author: jdouthwaite
Date: Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Section: Research

Part-time women war workers inspect cables in the Inspection Department of the ‘factory’ at Perrings furniture showrooms. They are producing electrical equipment for the Royal Air Force.

War generates unique and unexpected experiences in civilians’ ordinary lives. But war can also exist as a surprisingly uneventful setting for everyday working lives. At the European Social Sciences and History Conference three talks encouraged me to consider ways in which war work impacted civilians’ ordinary lives through memories that reclaim, forget and negotiate popular experiences of the Second World War.

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Resistance to the First World War Conference

Author: sgrimshaw
Date: Friday, April 15, 2016
Section: Research

Community day: Conscientious objection and resistance to the first world war

Over the weekend of 18-20 March an international conference took place in Leeds, focusing on resistance to the First World War. The conference, which I helped to organise, brought together academics, community groups, poets and storytellers from across the globe, including delegates who had travelled from Australia and the USA. The conference was envisaged following the suggestion that the prominent narratives during the First World War Centenary were limited to stories of those who had actively participated in the war effort.

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Dissecting Warsaw’s new museum of Polish Jewish history

Author: sbardgett
Date: Monday, August 24, 2015
Section: Research

Warsaw museum image 1

‘It took an army to make this exhibition’, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett told her audience and ‘having scholars in charge of each section had been the key to the Museum’s success’.  In May I attended a conference seven months after the opening of the core exhibition of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. At the conclusion of the eight- year project, those involved in the Museum’s creation were keen to open debate on what had worked well and what less so, and to identify the gaps in Polish Jewish history requiring further historical effort.  The core exhibition offered a starting point for that discussion.

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Versions of everyday survival in 1950s Britain: feeling fear without worrying.

Author: jdouthwaite
Date: Friday, March 27, 2015
Section: Research

Crown Film Unit production, The Waking Point, Film still, [00:14:32]; (Britain: Central Office of Information, 1951) IWM Collections; COI 1181.

The Cold War launched a new series of threats on Britain - from invasion by communists to atomic warfare. The military and moral implications of this ideological battle meant that fear was ever-present in the public sphere. My Collaborative Partnership PhD asks whether fear really was the most widely held emotion in 1950s Britain. At the British Social and Cultural History conference, held from 31 March to 2 April, I will be presenting my initial thoughts on this topic, using evidence gained through oral history interviews.

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