History@Manchester

Two Manchester historians awarded prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prizes

Dr Alexia Yates, Senior Lecturer in Modern History, and Dr Stefan Hanß, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, have been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize 2020 worth £100,000 in recognition of their outstanding research achievements. With this prize, The Leverhulme Trust recognises ground-breaking “work of outstanding research scholars of proven achievement, who have made and…

‘Black women who have struggled to make our efforts possible’: Olive Morris and the Legacy of Black Power in Manchester

In the month of October we will be marking Black History Month by sharing a series of short essays written by four recent graduates of the History Department at the University of Manchester. These students were part of Kerry Pimblott’s third-year seminar on the Black Freedom Movement and were tasked with putting their new historical…

What’s In A Name? Dr Linda Briggs discusses Christening Ships in Sixteenth-Century France

Image supplied by author. Last month, the Natural Environment Research Council invited the public to propose names for its new £200 million research vessel. [1] NERC intended to inspire people to read more about polar history and to generate interest in the ship’s future activities. It captured the public imagination, but in the most unexpected…

Only out to save themselves? Dr Sarah Roddy explores the history of fraudulent charity fundraisers.

Camilla Batmanghelidjh, founder of Kids Company. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. To anyone with even a passing knowledge of Victorian and Edwardian charities, the recent spectacular demise of Kids’ Company will have thrown up some strikingly familiar tropes. The charismatic, well-intentioned figurehead and founder, adept at using the media to build support, but then, virtually…

Antrobus the cleric and Peter the cock: Dr James Mawdesley discusses civil war, ministry and animal baptism in mid-seventeenth century Cumberland

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. This cockerel is not, alas, historic; but it is a cockerel. What was the inspiration for this project? I came across the case of Isaac Antrobus during my doctoral research, about the political activisms of the clergy in Lancashire and Cheshire during the reign of Charles I (1625-1649). I had…

‘Every dynasty has within itself the seeds of its own downfall’? Dr Georg Christ discusses what economists can learn from the medieval writings of Ibn Khaldûn

Morroccan stamp featuring Ibn Khaldûn courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. In August last year, I attended the World Economic History Congress in Kyoto where I presented a paper on Ibn Khaldûn (1332-1406), the Arabic historian, lawyer and polymath. I was tasked to look at medieval thoughts on state intervention in the economic sector. I thought Ibn…

History@Manchester

Stokely Carmichael in London: The birth of the British Black Power Movement?