The ‘Cold War’ is often seen as a confrontation between two major global powers: the United States and the Soviet Union. But it can only really be understood as a global conflict. This virtual study day considered the Cold War in a global perspective, exploring how deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union collided with surging anticolonial sentiment across the world. As empires collapsed, their former subjects started to imagine new futures, which challenged the idea of East-West conflict as the only way to organise the world.

The workshop consists of three short talks by specialists from the History department at the University of Southampton, followed by a Q&A session.

This workshop will be of particular interest to students taking the following A-level modules: ‘Mao’s China’, ‘Russia, 1917–1991’, ‘The Cold War in Europe’ and ‘The Making of a Superpower’.

February may be LGBT+ month, but what about the rest of the year? At the University of Southampton, we believe it’s important to pay attention to these often-marginalized histories all-year round. So on 21 April 2021, we held an online workshop exploring LGBT+ history and some of the different ways it has developed and evolved. The workshop involves three short talks by specialists from the History department, followed by a Q&A session. The talks cover a broad range of LGBT+ histories, from queer spaces in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and trans history in the mid-twentieth century United States to how the law has operated against homosexuality in the UK, Brazil and Russia.

As part of Black History Month 2020, Dr David Cox, Lecturer in Modern American History, spoke to Don John, Race & Diversity Consultant, about Black History in Southampton and the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Dr David Cox: ‘Histories of Racism’

Congratulations to our colleague, Dr Jon Conlin, whose book Mr Five Per Cent: The Many Lives of Calouste Gulbenkian has just been awarded the 2020 Wadsworth Prize.

First awarded in 1978, the Wadsworth Prize is awarded annually by the Business Archives Council for an outstanding contribution to British business history published the previous year. Past recipients include Geoffrey Jones, Niall Ferguson and David Kynaston. The judges praised Mr Five Per Cent for the insights it offered into the origins of the world oil industry, as well as the depth of the underlying research in business archives, both in the UK and abroad. Published in 2019, Mr Five Per Cent has since been translated into four foreign languages and an audiobook.

HOTCUS (Historians of the Twentieth Century United States) has developed a pack of two school assembly plans to mark Black History Month. These plans, designed by Dr. Megan Hunt (@_Megan_Hunt_), are intended to support school engagement with Black History Month whilst stimulating awareness amongst KS3 and KS4 students of the connections between Black British History and the American civil rights movement.

The materials can be accessed here

Welcome to Re-sourcing History, the outreach website of the History Department at the University of Southampton.

Ranked third in the country for the overall quality of our research, (REF2014), our large department contains over 40 scholars, collectively covering over 3,000 years of history, ranging from Ancient Egypt to the contemporary War on Terror. This website has been created to enable us to share a range of resources drawn from our diverse teaching and research in these topics, specifically selected to help support both teachers and students in the study of History.

You will find a continuously expanding range of source booklets which contain a selection of primary sources and commentaries related to specific A-level topics. The site also hosts a set of booklets written to support those undertaking Extended Project Qualifications and/or coursework, and an ever-growing series of podcasts in which our researchers share their expertise on topics directly linked to key A-level questions. Over time we will add more content to the site in the form of recorded taster lectures related to both A-level topics and areas of our own research not covered in the national curriculum, advice and guidance on completing UCAS applications and writing effective personal statements, and CPD materials for History teachers.

We hope you find our new initiative valuable. Please share this resource with colleagues and students, and do not hesitate to get in touch if you have particular requests or ideas as to how we can further support the next generation of historians.