of a social historian
One of the most significant developments in the study of history in recent years has been what some call the ‘spatial turn’ – the recognition that history moves through space as well as time. Once this is acknowledged, it becomes important to see the events of the past being played out at different levels. Different factors are at play at local, national, regional and global levels. Moreover, few stories begin and end in the same place. Movement becomes something to consider. The term ‘transnational history’ is often banded around in place of ‘comparative history’, but the two are different. Although both widen the frame to consider events in more than one place, transnational history does something more than compare. It places the focus on movements across borders – movements of people, funds, practices, technology, ideas… Diseases, for example, do not respect national borders and aid organisations follow them in response. The history of medicine and charity is therefore inevitably a transnational history.
An important challenge facing work like mine is whether we can bring together the local and the international into a single narrative. It’s something that’s cropped up in various ways in the following blog posts…
In recent months, I've been working on two co-authored book chapters for edited collections. Each has been a very different experience, but both have been wonderful exercises in approaching my own research interests with a wider lens - bringing an international view to my own British history research. With Dr Glen O'Hara (my former PhD …
Whenever a subject takes my interest, one of the first things I do is take a look at the relevant entries in the wonderful Wellcome Images collection online. Browsing their seasonal images, I came across these hand-painted Christmas cards from 1944. In themselves they are pleasant but nothing special, but two things about them struck …
Originally posted on the VAHS blog 29 April 2013 How do we remember the First World War? And what do historians make of how we remember it? Both of these things have been constantly renegotiated over that past century since the lamps went out across Europe, and they show no signs of slowing down as …
Musings 