All of our lectures are live streamed and are open to anyone to join us online, Fellows and Non-Fellows.
To view any of our past lectures please visit our YouTube channel.
To view any of our past lectures please visit our YouTube channel.
In 2020 we saw a shift in the way Society views and engages with contested heritage and histories and as a result of that we have been doing some internal reflection and work on addressing our own contested heritage as it relates to our Fellowship, collections and history. In June 2021 we held the first event in our Intertwined Histories series; Intertwined Histories: The Legacy of Slavery and Empire. The conference featured 6 short papers and a keynote speaker and addressed some of the issue of contested heritage and how it is represented within the sector. You can view all the papers on our YouTube channel here. This event was very well received and from the feedback it was apparent that attendees enjoyed hearing about the work that is being undertaken in this research area but also that we needed more time for questions and discussions. We hope that this panel session will allow us to delve deeper into these issues and engage more on these very important topics.
This panel session will focus on UK histories and confirmed speakers include Dr Michael Taylor author, The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery, Professor Miri Rubin on the contribution of Jewish communities in the medieval and/or early modern period, Shahed Saleem speaking about his work on British Mosques and community representations through structures, Josephine Beaton taking a grassroots look at multicultural UK history in the classroom and Dr Laura McAtackney looking at the legacy of colonialism in Ireland.
Each speaker will present a position point which will then be followed up by a Q&A. We hope this event will be engaging and informative and provide a platform for further discussion around contested heritage and intertwined legacies.
A follow up session in February 2022 will focus on an international perspective, details will be announced soon.
Dr Michael Taylor is a historian of Britain and the British Empire in the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. His book The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery (2020) explores the campaigns both to abolish and to defend slavery that Britons waged in the 1820s and 1830s; it was shortlisted for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Writing.
Miri Rubin is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary University of London. She is an historian of Europe who specialises in religious cultures between c.1000-c.1500in books such as Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (1987), Corpus Christi. The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (1991), and Gentile Tales. The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (1999), and Mother of God (2009). Miri translated and edited the mid-twelfth century Vita et passio Willelmi Norwicensis [The Life and Passion of William of Norwich], published as a Penguin Classic (2014). She delivered the Wiles Lectures at Queen’s University, Belfast, which were published by Cambridge University Press in 2020 as Cities of Strangers. Miri Rubin is Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, of the Royal Historical Society, and of the Academia Europea. Since January 2021, she has served as President of the Jewish Historical Society of England.
Shahed Saleem is an architect, lecturer and author, and teaches architecture at the University of Westminster. His book, The British Mosque; an architectural and social history, was published in 2018 by Historic England and is the first comprehensive account of Muslim architecture in Britain. Saleem has co-curated the V&A Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 on the theme of the mosque in Britain. Both his design and research work centres on Muslim architecture and space-making, and he expands these to look at wider themes of heritage, significance and belonging in the urban environment.
Josephine Beaton, MA Oxon, has contributed research from various sources to numerous articles on early African-American jazz and blues, including Black Music Research Journal Vol.29 & Vol.30 in 2009/10 pub. Centre for Black Music Research, Columbia College, Chicago, John Chilton’s book Sydney Bechet – The Wizard of Jazz pub. MacMillan Press 1987, besides articles on individual artistes and bands touring the British Isles and Europe, pub. Laurie Wright, Chingford, Essex. Josephine is a retired East End Secondary Headteacher, currently heavily involved in the Nubian Jak Community Trust’s Project to raise a statue in honour of the Windrush & Commonwealth Nurses, with accompanying book.
Dr Laura McAtackney is an Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. Originally from Belfast in Northern Ireland, she has several research interests including contemporary archaeology and heritage of post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland, experiences of Irish political imprisonment and the archaeology and heritage of the colonial Caribbean.
This event will be online only.
If you have any questions, please contact us on [email protected]