History Research (UoA28)
The History unit at Newcastle University is in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology. We carry out wide-ranging History research centred around our commitment to historical justice. Our submitted research stretches from Anglo-Saxon England and Medieval Iberia to twentieth-century China.
The History department at Newcastle University is in the School of History, Classics, and Archaeology. We carry out wide-ranging History research centred around our commitment to historical justice.
Our researchers
We are submitting 46 colleagues to REF2021. This includes 15 new permanent staff appointed to the Unit during this REF cycle.
The department also includes a growing number of postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers. One of our members was the director of the Northern Bridge Doctoral Training Partnership and led the successful bid for the second phase of this scheme.
Wide-ranging historical research
Our submitted research stretches from Anglo-Saxon England and Medieval Iberia to twentieth-century China. We have developed new, nationally significant hubs of expertise in areas including:
- oral history
- history of ideas
- maritime humanities
- medical humanities
- environmental humanities
- labour history group
Our members play a leading role in seven of the Faculty research groups. They have also taken a central role in the establishment of the Centre for Heritage.
Research outputs
Our History research outputs cover a broad range of topics, including:
- trade between England and the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period
- the history of peace, dreams, and ghosts in polar explorations
- survivor memorials in contemporary Australia
- the cotton trade in early twentieth-century America
- civil uprisings in modern Sudan
- a report for the Scottish government on land ownership
- field-defining research on critical concepts in oral history
Funded research projects
Members of our team are investigators in major, multidisciplinary collaborative research projects. For these projects, we have secured funding from organisations including:
- Leverhulme Trust
- The British Academy
- Wellcome Trust
- Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
- UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)
- Economic History Society
Notable funded History research projects include:
- UKRI GCRF – Living Deltas Hub
- AHRC – Wastes and Strays: The Past, Present, and Future of English Urban Commons
Research partnerships
We are keen to get involved with projects that reflect our strong commitment to historical justice. This includes projects in the public sphere and collaborations with external partners. We work with local, national, and international collaborators, including:
Through this work, we strive to enrich public understanding of the past and its relationship to the present.
Examples of our collaborative work
Oral history archive
Our Oral History Unit has worked closely with Newcastle University Library to develop an oral history archive. The aim of this is to catalogue and conserve distinctive materials for future use.
Race relations exhibition
We facilitated an international exhibition examining the history of race relations in Pittsburgh: “Not As It Is Written”: Black Pittsburgh in Voice and Image.
We held the exhibition at both the Great North Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh in 2017.
Foodbank Histories
Foodbank Histories is a collaborative project involving:
- our Oral History Unit
- Northern Cultural Projects
- Newcastle West End Food Bank
The project challenges myths about poverty and underlines its historical and social context. It aims to shift conversations about food banks away from victim-blaming and towards questioning the social structures that lead people into food poverty.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
Historical justice underpins all our work, including:
- our research
- our strategy
- our engagement with University and Faculty agendas
We are also committed to fairness, inclusion, and diversity in our own behaviours and practices. Several members of our Unit contributed to the School’s Athena Swan team, which successfully won Bronze accreditation in 2020.
As well as gender, we are also committed to exploring other protected characteristics and how how they intersect.
Members of our team have taken a leading role in the University’s campaign to decolonise the curriculum. We have seized the opportunity provided by Black History Month to engage our students in issues arising out of the Black Lives Matter campaign.
Research case studies
Using the Past to Reaffirm Indigenous Identity in Present-Day Mexico
There has been concern over the marginalisation of indigenous communities in Mexico. This has provoked well-meaning, but ineffective initiatives to reverse the trend.
Brewster’s research offered an innovative approach to the problem. They analysed the contribution of indigenous communities to the socio-economic development of rural regions.
The research focused on the Nahua community of San Miguel Tenango.
It contributed towards current local programmes designed to revitalise an endangered language. It also inspired an inter-generational discussion about the past where they embraced the whole region.
It helped to reintroduce a past form of community labour. Here, adult members of the community contribute weekly towards projects of social and economic benefit.
Increasing Public Understanding of Greek Family History
Greece's interest in genealogy is far lower than other areas of Western Europe and in North America.
This is because online searchable family history resources are rare and underdeveloped. Advice and guidance on how to undertake family history is also scarce.
Hionidou’s research utilises and links civil registration and census records, and has addressed this gap. She created a free searchable database embedded in a website. It offers both the data itself, and advice and guidance for users.
Her school lessons and public talks enabled pupils, teachers and the wider public to learn how to research family history. Hionidou’s research has changed the practices of the General State Archives of Greece. It has also changed the commercial genealogical organisation Ancestry.
These developments have been important in shaping heritage and educational practices. They have also strengthened individuals’ and communities’ sense of identity.
Shaping Western Responses to Sudan's Civilian Uprising (2018-2019)
Dr Willow Berridge’s research has made her a leading commentator and activist on Sudanese politics.
She has shaped Western responses to the Sudanese uprising of 2018-2019 which ousted the Islamist regime of Umar al-Bashir. The regime had attracted international condemnation for its gross violations of human rights.
Berridge’s expertise and historical imperatives in Sudan helped a period of research-led activism. This involved petitions and policy briefings.
Due to Berridge’s intervention, the UK government changed its language around their response to the crisis. They shifted from a mild ‘concern’ to a more robust condemnation.
Informing Landscape Decision-Making Frameworks in Scotland
Professor Annie Tindley's research has helped to inform the political debate around land reform and management in Scotland. It established accurate parameters and made recommendations for positive changes.
This project focused on a specific judicial landholding model, Small Landholdings.
It created a land register in a pilot location but with national implications. This would underpin accurate and informed decision-making, and provide a test case for policy change.
The Rural and Environmental Science and Analytical Service Division of the Scottish Government benefited from this research.