Skip to content Register here to participate in the event. Registration is free but places are limited. William Hogarth, ‘The Assembly at Wanstead House’ (c. 1728-32): Wikimedia Commons In recent decades, the eighteenth century has been a notable growth area in historical studies and related disciplines. Since its study was long neglected, historians of the […]
How Edward IV Inspired Game of Thrones’ Robb Stark
As part of the degree course at UON, history students have the opportunity to be assessed by all kinds of interesting methods, from podcasts to posters. Over the next few weeks we’ll showcase some student work (now it’s been marked and de-anonymised!) here. This is a blog post completed for the module Wars of the […]
Shoes and maritime history
Regular readers of the blog will know that I am currently travelling around the country visiting museums as part of my project ‘Shoes and the Georgian Man’, funded by the Society for Antiquaries. I am studying surviving examples of shoes from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in order to explore the social significance of footwear […]
Aristotle’s Masterpiece, the “banned Georgian sex manual”
Skip to content As a historian who works on the eighteenth century, I am always interested when Georgian stories appear in the news. And right on cue for Valentine’s Day, various news outlets were covering the sale of a “banned Georgian sex manual” at an auction in Derbyshire. The book in question was an edition […]
Mixing Medieval and Modern: A New Module at Northampton
After a successful year running my first year module The Medieval World 1200-1500, I’m delighted that this autumn I’m able to launch a year two module: Medieval Chivalry and its Afterlives. Chivalry is a popular topic with students interested in medieval society. Who hasn’t been caught up in the romance of knights jousting for the […]
Northampton hosts national society
This weekend, the University of Northampton hosted the spring Council meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS). Delegates from across the UK gathered at Sunley Hotel for two days of discussion and planning. This is the first time that the meeting has been held in the midlands, with meetings in recent years having […]
Brunel, boots and buckles
Yesterday I gave a talk in possibly the most interesting venue of my career. The Brunel Museum in the east end of London got in touch because they had some buckles in their collection, which belonged to Marc Isambard Brunel (father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel). Northampton Museum had helped to identify the buckles, and the […]
Undergraduate Studies: BA History
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com We are proud to offer an exciting broad undergraduate BA programme in History at the University of Northampton. From medieval knights and early modern servants, to country houses, hospitals and asylums, through to the trenches of the First World War and beyond, you can explore a thousand years of history from […]
History Trip to the British Museum
Students on the steps at the British Museum Last week as part of our Welcome Week activities at the University of Northampton, we ran a free trip to the British Museum. A lot of our new students joined us, along with a few returning students who fancied a day out in London! Given this involved […]
James Boswell Under ‘Lockdown’ in Eighteenth Century London
Recently reading James Boswell’s London Journal I came across a period when due to Gonorrhoea, Boswell decided to isolate himself from the rest of the world and society at large apart from a few select individuals who were permitted to see him. Boswell is most famous for his work as a diarist and biographer. His […]
Glimpses into Others’ Lives at the British Museum
History is all about stories. The stories we tell ourselves about the past. The stories we tell ourselves about the past, about our communities, about ourselves. The British Museum’s vast and world-famous collections hold multiple examples of stories around the globe. Some of these stories are easily accessible to us via the objects. Others are […]
New book on the history of shoes
Matthew McCormack from History at UON has published a book on Georgian shoes. Shoes and the Georgian Man is published by Bloomsbury. It is a full-colour book with around 80 illustrations, including images of many of the shoes that Matthew studied during his research. The book is available in paperback, hardback and ebook formats via […]
Needy knights and rich old ladies: Sir John Sandys and social mobility in late Medieval England
In 1980, Terry Jones, actor, presenter, writer and Monty Python member, published what has become something of a literary event. Chaucer’s Knight: Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary is a book that had medieval historians foaming at the mouth for many a year afterwards. It generated much debate and forever altered the landscape of the knightly class and […]
Medievalism, Masculinity, and Online Radicalisation in Extreme Right Spaces
When I was hired by Northampton almost five years ago as their first medieval historian, I never expected that I would end up researching very contemporary history! But one of the rewarding things about working within a small, friendly department is finding opportunities for collaboration in unexpected places. So I found myself swapping ideas with […]