Grant Success for Shane Smith and Joe Hardwick

Congratulations are due to Shane Smith (second-year PhD student) and Joe Hardwick who have each received grants of £1,000 from the Canada-UK Foundation for research trips to Ontario in 2016.

Shane’s project on the migration of military veterans to Canada explores the culture of petitioning among settlers in the early nineteenth century. He will be making use of petitions that veterans sent to the colonial authorities for land (held at Libraries and Archives Canada, Ottawa), sources that will tell us a good deal about public interaction with state bodies. Joe’s project looks at the culture of special days of worship in the Canadian colonies from the eighteenth century through to the mid-twentieth. Executive government records at LAC will help him determine how these days were called, and the archive’s extensive newspaper collections will shed light on public reception.

The Canada-UK Foundation is a very useful source of funding and anyone interested in undertaking research in Canada should check out their website.

The American Studies Newsletter, 2015

Haven't had a chance to look at the the 2015 American Studies Newsletter? Download it here and find out about all the exciting things happening at Northumbria University, past, present, and future.  The Newsletter includes interviews with an undergrad and a grad student, the latest about grant success, conferences that have taken place and those planned for 2016, and information about a visiting scholar.  See also important updates on staff, new publications, and more.  

Prof Brian Ward writes in his intro to the Newsletter:

In 2014-2015, the American Studies programme at Northumbria University continued to enhance its reputation as home to one of the UK’s most impressive constellations of researchers and teachers in US history, literature, and popular culture. As you’ll see from the features in this latest edition of the newsletter, during the last year we have published an im- pressive array of books and articles, given countless talks at schools, conferences, and universities around the globe, hosted a couple of major international conferences, participated in a wide range of media work in television, radio, and online, been involved with a variety of public events that have showcased our expertise on everything from US religion and politics, to the impact in Britain of American popular music.

Meanwhile, Northumbria graduate students, whether doing MAs or PhDs on American-themed topics, are now a major and respected part of the American Studies landscape in Britain—a status exemplified by the election of doctoral student Megan Hunt as the postgraduate secretary for the admirably named HOTCUS (Historians of the Twentieth Century United States). Moreover, with the arrival of our third undergraduate intake in 2015, we also now have students in place at all three levels of the American Studies BA, while undergraduates majoring in history and literature continue to flock to US-themed modules. As ever, one of our priorities this year is to do all we can to make sure that those students have a thoroughly enjoyable educational experience and that they emerge from Northumbria with the kinds of skills, knowledge, attitudes and aptitudes that will set them up well for employment or further study. American Studies students at Northumbria do not only get the opportunity to learn about the US, its history, politics, and cultures, from a cracking team of world-class teacher-researchers, they also get to develop the kinds of analytical and communication skills that are invaluable in any number of careers. Another priority is to work even more closely with schools and colleges to make sure that they and their students are aware of the attractions of American Studies as a degree programme, and the many advantages of doing it at Northumbria. >>>read on

James McConnell Wins Bid to the AHRC-funded WWI Living Legacies Centre

Congratulations to James McConnell for his successful bid to the AHRC-funded WWI Living Legacies Centre. James describes the project below.

WWI poster, courtesy of the
Library of Congress. London:
Johnson, Riddle & Co., Ltd., 1915.

In mobilising ‘citizen historians’, this project will work with community partners such as the Northumbria First World War Commemoration project (NWW1), a path-breaking, multiple Heritage Lottery Fund-supported group, which has pioneered the use of grassroots-led research methods, combining these with cutting-edge IT, to produce community-led research on the men from the former borough of Tynemouth who fell during the conflict. ‘Citizen history’ is a relatively new concept in which professional historians work alongside volunteers from a range of backgrounds, often online, to collect and analyse data in relation to particular topics. For a well-known example of ‘citizen history’, click here.

In the case of this project, we’ll be looking to recruit volunteers to research the lives and wartime service of ‘Geordies’ in the armies of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada during World War One. By ‘crowdsourcing’ research in this collaborative way, the project will collect information that will help us to understand why ‘Geordies’ emigrated and how these journey relate to their wartime movements and even post-war locations of settlement.

The project will consider not only the complexities of individual ‘migration histories’ but also the way that individuals and communities saw their identities (as ‘Geordies’ and Britons, but also Australians, Canadians, or New Zealanders); how they understood ‘Geordie’ migration more generally, and how people came to see the empire in new ways through this migration. By using the term ‘Geordie’, we’re aware that the name is often used to describe the people of Newcastle, but it has been used by scholars to describe the people of the wider north east region  as well. In seeking to find volunteers across the world who will help the project research the lives of these soldiers, we’re using the term because it’s internationally recognisable.

Anja-Silvia Goeing's Bid Success with the British Academy/Leverhulme

A hearty congrats to Anja-Silvia Goeing (anniversary fellow in history, Northumbria University) for her recent British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grant bid success: "Worlds and Networks of Higher Learning: Modes of interaction between Universities, Academies and Schools, 1400-1750."  Anja is joined in the initiative by Glyn Parry (Roehampton), and Mordechai Feingold (CalTech).  More on the project:

This international collaborative project will bring together a working group, the members of which plan to produce over the next two years a volume scrutinising the nature and scope of higher learning and collaborative networks from the late Middle Ages to the era of Enlightenment. Our novel approach will consider topics that university historians have largely ignored: the intense collaboration between university scholars and instructors; printers and providers of teaching objects and tools; administrators and students at academies, independent colleges, gymnasiums and Latin schools. Contributing experts will include renowned scholars in late medieval and early modern school, academy, book and university history of England, the German lands, France, Italy, Spain and bordering countries. The group will write a book together, hold four workshops to present and discuss single book chapters for publication, publish the outcome, host an internet site, and will plan an extended working and funding programme for the following years.

The project starts in July 2015.

David Gleeson to Participate in Humanities in the European Research Area Event

After a competitive process, Professor David Gleeson has been selected to attend the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) ‘Uses of the Past’ Matchmaking  Event in Tallinn, Estonia on 29 January 2015.  As one of only 300 scholars invited to attend, he will gain (and share back with the Northumbria History Programme) vital knowledge about the application process and  will gain access to a wider group of European scholars for collaborative, transnational bids to this scheme. 

More from the HERA webpage:

The aim of the Matchmaking Event is to present the Call for transnational humanities-led research proposals under the theme “Uses of the Past” to be formally announced in January 2015 and to facilitate the building of international research partnerships. With up to €23 million available, the research programme will fund new and exciting Humanities-centred projects on Uses of the Past involving researchers from four or more countries.

Eligible scholars are senior and early career researchers based in the following participating countries: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom.

To attend the Matchmaking event, scholars had to submit a project idea fitting with the Uses of the Past theme via the application form. . . .

Congratulations to David!