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The Institute for Dark Tourism Research

May 6, 2012 By admin 1 Comment

Auschwitz (photo taken by Dr Bex Lewis)

Having visited Body Worlds, a number of concentration camps, the ‘Killing Fields’, and having taught about memory in history, this story in Times Higher Education caught my interest: the field of new research ‘Dark Tourism’.

The preserved fetuses and chess-playing cadavers in Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds have made it the world’s most popular touring exhibition. Although the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers were a significant New York City tourist attraction, the numbers have been dwarfed by the vast tide of visitors – 9 million in 2010 – who have come to look at Ground Zero since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

The phenomenon of “dark tourism” is now the subject of serious academic analysis. Last week saw the official opening of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at the University of Central Lancashire. This is largely the brainchild of its executive director, Philip Stone, a senior lecturer in tourism who worked as a management consultant and general manager, largely within the tourist industry, before joining the academy in 2001.

He developed a particular interest in dark tourism – which he now defines as “the act of travel to sites of death, disaster or the seemingly macabre” – when he came across a student doing a dissertation on the topic.

Read full story, or the Institute for Dark Tourism Research.

Filed Under History Tagged With History

Learning Lessons from History: Titanic

March 29, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

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As we hit a century since the Titanic sank, and James Cameron’s film makes it back into the cinema in 3D, there’s a great article in Times Higher Education re the lessons that can be learnt from across a range of subjects:

On his office wall, James Reason displays a reproduction of a poster that was used to advertise tickets on the RMS Titanic.

The choice was a deliberate one for Reason, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Manchester whose research has focused on human error.

“It’s an excellent example of a classic organisational accident,” he says of the liner that sank 100 years ago next month. “They sail happily into disaster, not seeing or thinking about it.”

A century later, the same “unwarranted insouciance”, as Reason calls it, that characterised this famous disaster is still perceived in events such as the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the foundering of the MS Costa Concordia earlier this year.

For a small number of academics around the world, the tragic story of the Titanic is surprisingly replete with modern-day lessons in psychology, organisational management, marine engineering and even media and film studies.

Read full article. Note that the photo that accompanies this post was one of the few freely available on sec.hu, and even provides its own little piece of history – one of the people in the photo didn’t get their passport on time, so missed the ship!

Filed Under History Tagged With History, Learning and Teaching, Titanic

‘Internationalisation’ in Universities

March 8, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

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The importance of history in affecting modern day policy should always be considered:

‘Internationalisation’ is the trend du jour for universities, but they would do well to consider its earlier manifestation during the British Empire’s long 19th century. As Tamson Pietsch explains, history has much to tell us about the possibilities – and pitfalls – of the phenomenon today

Across the world, higher education is increasingly characterised by talk of “internationalisation”. Taking a number of forms – from charging foreign students full-cost fees to establishing overseas campuses and offering offshore degrees – internationalisation is big business. These activities offer cash-strapped universities a way to increase their income while also advertising themselves as institutions that equip students to work in the global knowledge economy.

But to a historian of the British Empire, much of the current talk about internationalisation sounds strangely familiar. At least four of its contemporary variants can be traced back to the 19th century, when the expanding routes of British trade and empire were creating new kinds of global connections and different forms of educational entanglement. These earlier versions of university internationalisation deserve attention, for they have much to tell us about the possibilities – and the perils – of the phenomenon in the 21st century.

Read full story.

Filed Under History Tagged With History, Lessons, University

Humanities Postgraduates? Preserve of the Rich?

March 2, 2012 By admin 2 Comments

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I received a small bursary from the University of Winchester in order to undertake my history PhD … is such a possibility going to become the exclusive preserve of large institutions with huge reserves of money/gifting? I gained a huge amount from being a part of the department, rather than a cog in the wheel!

The University of Oxford has received a multi-million-pound gift for postgraduate humanities study aimed at the world’s most promising scholars amid concern that public funding cuts could make such courses the preserve of elite institutions.

The donation – which will ultimately amount to around £26 million – was made by Mica Ertegun, a renowned interior designer and the widow of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. Expected eventually to create at least 35 scholarships for humanities graduates at Oxford every year, the gift is the most generous for the study of the humanities in the institution’s 900-year history.

However, some observers fear that cuts to universities’ public funding will mean that only elite institutions with access to substantial donations and endowment income will be able to fully support postgraduate provision.

Postgraduates are not able to access the publicly subsidised student loans system. A recent report from the 1994 Group of smaller research-intensive universities warned of the dire consequences for postgraduate provision across the sector if future students, laden with debt from higher undergraduate fees, were not offered support for postgraduate fees.

Filed Under History Tagged With Funding, Humanities, Postgraduate, Times Higher Education

Bad History!

February 11, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

Is there such a thing as ‘really bad books’ – e.g. the author picks upon The Da Vinci Code as an example of bad history which is so powerful that many people think that this is ‘how it is’:

The world is full of “bad books”; not just uninteresting, or ill-informed, or morally repugnant books, but books that set out to present or defend positions that are insupportable in logic. I speak here not of books such as Hitler’s Mein Kampf but of books that include Erich von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods? (1968), which presents “proof” of visits to Earth by extraterrestrials, or of Barry Fell’s America B.C. (1976), which “proves” that ancient Celts reached North America before the time of Christ, or The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982), in which Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln purport to prove that lineal descendants of Jesus (and his wife, Mary Magdalene) walk among us. The Holy Blood has the additional distinction of having been the inspiration for Dan Brown’s best-seller The Da Vinci Code(2003). Often these bad books become quite popular, and frequently gain a wider audience than good books on the same subjects. In discouraging my students from relying on such bad books, I began to wonder why they are popular. Few are models of prose style, although most provide a brisk enough narrative. Most of them are long, between 300 and 500 pages. Are we seeing here just the literary equivalent of Gresham’s law, or is there something else going on?

Read full article.

Filed Under History Tagged With History, Popular History, Times Higher Education

History and Educational Technology (@oliverquinlan)

January 22, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

As someone who works in educational technology, and with a first degree/PhD in history, very interesting blog post:

People I meet in education are often surprised to learn that my undergraduate degree was not in technology, or anything related to ICT. In fact, I spent three years at Sheffield University studying History, particularly early modern social history. Having moved into a career based on education and technology, it would be easy for me to dismiss the importance of this part of my learning. However, I have recently realised that the study of History has shaped my thinking more deeply than I sometimes think.

I always think the importance of History is contrast. Learning about the past gives a different perspective, one which makes us question the way things are today, and how they might be. It is a bit more complex than simply ‘learning from our mistakes’, or even some notion of progress towards some greater, more developed state. What I think it does is provide a mirror we can hold up to our selves; to see what has changed, what has remained the same, and why that is. It helps us to see the constants of being human.

Read full article.

Filed Under History Tagged With Academia, Skills

Downton Abbey: House Popular?

January 16, 2012 By admin Leave a Comment

A really interesting story in Times Higher Education recently as to the popularity of Downton Abbey - and how the house itself – the ultimate British status symbol – has contributed to its popularity.

The success of Downton Abbey is a tribute not just to Julian Fellowes’ ability as a dramatist, but to the enduring popularity of his subject: the country house. Highclere Castle, playing Downton Abbey, is the real star of the show. The British are in love with the “big house”, the centre of a landed estate, and for centuries the dynamic heart of whole societies and economies in rural Britain.

The wealth and status of British landowners over the centuries and the impact of primogeniture in keeping estates intact has meant that Britain has a wealth of these magnificent properties, from mellow mansions nestling in the English shires to the palaces erected by Scottish dukes and earls in the border counties, and every year millions of us visit them.

Read full story.

Filed Under History Tagged With Downton Abbey, History, Museums, TV Show

The right kind of history?

December 3, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Interesting story led by Sir David Cannadine:

Historian calls for evidence, not scaremongering, to inform how subject is taught. Matthew Reisz writes

One of Britain’s leading historians has called for “serious evidence-based policymaking about history teaching in schools” and an end to a debate characterised by “too much talk of crisis, too much irresponsible scaremongering, too much polarisation of views”.

Sir David Cannadine, Dodge professor of history at Princeton University, has recently carried out a major research project with Jenny Keating and Nicola Sheldon, research fellows at the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research.

The results are now published in a book released last week, The Right Kind of History: Teaching the Past in Twentieth-Century England.

“We have looked at huge amounts of official material, directives from Whitehall going back to the 1900s, and created our own oral history archive of pupils and teachers,” Sir David said. “Much of the discussion is very polarised – by academics, by politicians, by journalists looking for a good story.”

Debates on knowledge versus skills, elite versus popular history, and whether “we want a cheerleading story of national greatness or something more nuanced”, have been around for decades and are unlikely to be sorted out any time soon, he argued. Yet in the classroom, the researchers discovered, “these polarised issues aren’t like that”.

Read full story.

Filed Under History Tagged With David Cannadine, History, Times Higher Education

Tribes & Tribulations

November 12, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/690462As someone who works inside/outside my original disciplinary boundaries, works across the disciplines, and has promoted interdisciplinary research – this was an interesting story:

Boxed into our disciplines, we academics toil away, slaves to the journal-impact factor. Everything about our research has to be geared to the style, interests and ideology of the most prestigious journals in our field. And some academics labour in obscure, forgotten, overlooked corners, where there are few journals of extremely modest impact.

There is a solution, but it is not for the faint-hearted: cross disciplinary boundaries. Step from literature to linguistics, psychology to psychiatry, economics to management. Go where the favoured high-impact journals are, and submit a paper.

Some surprises are in store for the naive border-crosser. It is a culture shock of considerable proportions. And, as with all culture shocks, it makes you examine your own culture rather closely. Rudyard Kipling was right when he said: “What should they know of England who only England know?” Here is a brief guide to what intrepid cross-disciplinary explorers might expect to encounter on their travels.

Read full story.

Filed Under History Tagged With Disciplines, Interdisciplinary

Sources of Illumination @timeshighered

October 2, 2011 By admin Leave a Comment

Characterised by creativity and attuned to the needs of their age, the first European universities have important lessons for higher education today, says Miri Rubin

As a historian of the Middle Ages, I am frequently asked about the links between universities then and now. Given the momentous changes that are affecting modern-day institutions of higher education and that touch the lives of so many people – students, parents, teachers, employers – such questions have become more frequent and more urgent, too.

All historians (especially those of us who focus on more ancient times) delight in pointing out parallels between “our” period and the present. An assessment of the role of medieval universities reveals some telling affinities between higher education then and now – and may hold lessons for today’s turbulent times.

When universities emerged between 1150 and 1200 in Italy, France and then England, they answered the needs of the two main institutions of governance – the Church on the one hand and dynastic kingdoms on the other. These institutions required bureaucrats: people trained in the procedures of government and in its lingua franca, Latin.

The standards of written Latin still depended on the conventions that had developed in the Greco-Roman world, encoded in the liberal arts of rhetoric, logic and grammar. The jobs for university graduates – bachelors of the arts – included the drafting of letters and diplomatic documents and the recording of important transactions, personal and public, ranging from marriage contracts to manorial accounts.

Read full story.

Filed Under History Tagged With History, University
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