Kepler and the Star of Bethlehem

In December 2020 there was a rare astronomical event at the winter solstice: a great conjunction. A conjunction occurs whenever two astronomical objects appear close together in the sky. A great conjunction is a conjunction of the planets Saturn and Jupiter, the slowest-moving planets visible to the naked eye. A great conjunction occurs every twenty … Read more

What can the census tell us about the history of the Welsh language?

Professor Martin Johnes recently gave an online talk for the genealogy website FindmyPast about using the census to understand the history of the Welsh language. Drawing upon his research into the role of education in the decline of Welsh in the late 19th century, Martin explored how the census collected language data, questions around its … Read more

Contested Histories: creating and critiquing public monuments and memorials in a new age of iconoclasm. Online workshop, 28-29 June 2021.

This event, organised by Swansea University’s Conflict, Reconstruction and Memory (CRAM) research group, will explore debates surrounding the cultural and political uses of monuments, reflecting upon their role in the memorialisation and imagining of the past. We will take a broad view of ‘monuments’, considering artefacts such as war memorials, cenotaphs and public statuary as … Read more

Careers in Politics

On 10 March the College of Arts and Humanities welcomed three external speakers with extensive public policy and political advice careers to give employability guidance to students interested in political careers. Organised and chaired by Dr Sarah Crook, Lecturer in History, the roundtable shed light on what an ‘average’ day might be (there’s no such … Read more

Identifying and Mapping the Heritage of Britain’s Steel Industry

Dr Gemma Almond writes: The Social Worlds of Steel project, which has been running since May 2019, has unearthed important new evidence of the impact of the steel industry on towns and cities in twentieth-century Britain. In the current phase of the project we are exploring how the heritage of the industry is represented to, … Read more

The Medieval Economy of Wales

Dr Matthew Stevens’ book, The Economy of Medieval Wales, 1067-1536 has been attracting some glowing reviews recently. The book examines the economy of Wales from the first Norman intrusions of 1067 to the Act of Union of England and Wales in 1536. Key themes include the evolution of the agrarian economy; the foundation and growth … Read more

Race and Boxing in Modern Britain

Professor Martin Johnes has recently been researching the intersections between race and boxing in post-1945 Britain. With Matthew Taylor (De Montfort University), he explored the abolition of the sport’s colour bar in 1948 and the impact that had on the sport in the context of rising migration and racial tensions in the 1950s and 1960s. … Read more