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Notes from the archive

Monarchy and Democracy in Liechtenstein

by Dr Alastair Paynter In 2021, 44 states worldwide have a monarch as Head of State. Of these, sixteen are part of the Commonwealth (although this will be reduced to fifteen when Barbados becomes a republic). In Europe alone, there are twelve sovereign monarchies—Andorra, Belgium, Denmark, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Vatican City. Continue reading →

Edgar Feuchtwanger, OBE

By Tony Kushner The History Department and the Parkes Institute are delighted to share the good news that Edgar Feuchtwanger has been awarded an OBE in the 2021 Queen’s Honours  List for services to ‘Anglo-German understanding and history’. Edgar, who was born in Munich in 1924 into a distinguished German Jewish family of bankers and culture (his uncle was the famous and influential novelist, Lion Feuchtwanger) came to Britain as a child refugee in February 1939. Continue reading →

Professor Chris Woolgar, Fellow of the British Academy

In this year of pandemic and distancing, the Southampton history department is united in pleasure and appreciation at the election of our colleague, Professor Chris Woolgar, as a Fellow of the British Academy. This is a rare and high honour, which is given to a few of the most influential, original and admired academics internationally across the fields of the humanities and social sciences each year. Continue reading →

Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 January 2020

Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 January 2020 By Dr George Gilbert It is more or less impossible to fully understand the course of the twentieth century without reference to the Holocaust. For good reasons, this human tragedy has come to dominate the historiography of genocides across vast stretches of time and place. In recent decades, however, good scholarly work after good scholarly work has wrestled with genocides of other types. Continue reading →

Unit 31: Southampton’s Time Capsule

Last semester, Year Three History students and their tutors on the module, ‘Between Private Memory and Public History’ visited a Southampton space not usually open to the public, Unit 31. Unit 31 — sited on an industrial park between West Quay shopping centre and IKEA — is Southampton City’s Management Centre and houses some of the many objects that the city’s museums, including Southampton’s Sea City and Tudor House. Continue reading →

The final and fateful sojourn of the Iranian Revolutionary and Scholar, Dr Ali Shariati (1933-1977), in Southampton

This year, as part of the group project module, my students* explored the brief stay, in Southampton, of Dr Ali Shariati, who is recognised as the ideological father of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. His short stay in the UK and unexpected death on 18 June 1977 have been shrouded in myth. Both scholars and the wider public have thought that Shariati died in London. Information on Shariati’s time in Southampton was sparse and hazy. Continue reading →

Trust Me, I’m a Doctor…

Joan Tumblety has recently published an article in the Lancet exploring the history of medical lobbying (follow the link here to read more). Here she explores some of the key questions that she has about this topic: Trust me, I'm a doctor.... If we laugh at this popular phrase, what is the truth we are recognising? In my research, I have become increasingly interested in the problem of what might be called the cultural overreach of physicians. Continue reading →