The School of History’s Dr Jan Loop is set to led a team of researchers in a new project made possible by a €10 million grant from the European Research Council (ERC).

The project will investigate the impact the Qur’an had on cultural, religious and intellectual history from 1150-1850, and will produce ground-breaking research in collaboration with the universities of Madrid, Nantes and Naples.

The outcome will be academic conferences, books and a multimedia exhibition demonstrating the place the Qur’an has within European cultural history.

Dr Loop explained: ‘The Qur’an is deeply imbedded in the political and religious thought of Europe and is part of the intellectual repertoire of Medieval and Early Modern Europeans. As such, this research will question the belief that Islam is ‘foreign’ to Europe but also challenge certain Islamic fundamentalist views about the Qur’an.’

History student Mary Sullivan recently completed some research as part of our recent Beyond the Barricades Exhibition, which is bringing together artists from various nations, looking at different dimensions of a revolution by focusing on the concept of Barricade.

The Swing Riots

According to E. P. Thompson (1963), the wholesale enclosure of common land between 1760 and 1820 and the loss of the rights to cultivate it led to the impoverishment of the landless labourer, (especially in the south of England) who was left to ‘support the tenant-farmer, the landowner, and the tithes of the Church’.[1]  However, poor harvests, low wages and high unemployment between 1829 and 1830, led to hunger among poor agricultural workers and their families.  To add to their troubles, the Agricultural Revolution had introduced new technology such as the threshing machine which separated the grain from the stalks by beating it and thus dispensed with the need of workers to perform this task. This situation resulted in protests that started in Kent and later spread to surrounding counties and further.  They were called the Swing riots after the eponymous Captain Swing. The made-up name symbolised or represented the anger of the poor labourers in rural England who wanted a return to the pre-machine days when human labour was used. The threatening letters were sent to farmers and landowners which demanded that wages increase and which often told farmers to desist in their employment of threshing machines. Landowners and farmers also had their farm buildings and hayricks set alight.  According to Carl Griffin, who recently reassessed the origins of the disturbances in Kent, Swing first put his name to a threatening letter addressed to a farmer in Dover in early October 1830: ‘you are advised that if you doant put away your thrashing machine against Munday next you shall have a SWING’[2](on the gallows). According to Hobsbawm and Rude̒, the first of the Swing riots occurred on the night of the 28^th May 1830, with the destruction of a threshing machine in Lower Hardres, near Canterbury.[3] Hobsbawm argued that in Kent, where the movement started and persisted the longest, there were five phases of action: Continue reading →

Hope you have a good start to the new term! Check out our programme for the Research Seminar Series and Research Events (Autumn 2018). Spread the word, and join us!

Congratulations to PhD student Daniel Belteki, who has been awarded the Humanities Postgraduate Research Prize 2018.

The prize is based on his track record of achievements while at Kent, which includes completing a student internship at the Royal Museums Greenwich, providing assistance with research projects such as Dr Rebekah Higgitt’s Transit of Venus 1874 digitization project, organising the School’s Postgraduate Research Seminar Series this year, and his role as assistant to the Book Reviews Editor for The British Journal for the History of Science, amongst other achievements.

Daniel studies as part of The Centre for the History of the Science (CHOTS). His research focuses on the history of the Airy Transit Circle of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich – the astronomical instrument that defined the Greenwich Prime Meridian. Congratulations Daniel!

Read all about the prizes here: https://www.kent.ac.uk/graduateschool/graduateschoolprizes.html

The latest edition of our School newsletter, History Today, is now available to download here: History Today June 2018.

Released monthly, the newsletter features the latest news and updates from the School, as well as upcoming events and recent student and staff achievements.

In this issue:

• The School’s Athena SWAN success
• Highlights of the academic year 2017/18
• History academic exhibits work in the British Academy Summer Showcase
• Report from the MEMS Festival 2018
• The Gateways Project investigates the Zeebrugge Raid of 1918
• Get to know our new PA to the Head of School

In February 2018 a number of students led by Dr Ben Marsh embarked on a field trip to Waterloo as part of our ongoing Waterloo200 project. The group contained students from first year right through to PhD level, who are all currently working as ambassadors Continue reading →