The majority of research in this UoA is officially classified as world-leading or internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour.
The following academic unit forms the submission to UoA 30:
School of History, Classics and Archaeology
As part of the School, the History unit at Newcastle is a coherent community of scholars whose research focus is primarily concerned with 'history from below', with a greater emphasis on social and cultural than on purely political history.
The research undertaken by the unit is located within three main overarching but also overlapping research strands:
death, disease and demographics
political, cultural and medical histories
conflict and post-conflict societies
Find out about the research, projects and members of staff within history.
Almost all our historians are also active within the broader Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty interdisciplinary research groups:
Informing the public perception of marriage, family life and inheritance in the pre-modern era
This case study demonstrates the public and policy impact of the historical research undertaken by Professor Helen Berry on marriage from the pre-modern era to today. Its impact lies in the way in which the research informs public perceptions of marriage as an institution in Britain and abroad by:
challenging cultural values and social assumptions about marriage
expanding the sensibilities of individuals on this subject
extending the range and improving the quality of evidence pertaining to the history of marriage and through this enhancing public understanding of sexual health issues and challenges posed by civil partnerships
Policy/Social Engagement impact is further achieved and is demonstrable via the Inspirational Women North East 2012 (IWNE12) project. Public impact is demonstrable via the feedback (available) to publications and media presentations of the research from Europe to the United States.
Beyond the battlefield: enhancing public understanding of the impact of nineteenth-century warfare in the United States
This case study demonstrates the public and educational impact of research into the lives of American Civil War soldiers and veterans in the following ways:
the underpinning research challenges traditional social assumptions concerning war wounds and the medical and political responses to these
greatly extended the range and improved the quality of evidence pertaining to the history of warfare and wounding in the United States
expanded public understanding of the long-term effects of the Civil War on American society
informed and influenced the content of secondary and tertiary education on this subject in the UK and the US.
Facilitating family histories: informing public understanding of pauper lives in Georgian London
This case study demonstrates the public and broader social engagement impact of the research, some of it collaborative, undertaken by Professor Jeremy Boulton on the lived experience of paupers in the past. The impact resides in the public use of this research for genealogical research. The reach and significance of this research is located in three interconnected areas:
the vast extension of the range and the improvement in the quality of evidence pertaining to pauper lives in Britain the early modern era
the collection and contextualisation of previously unavailable archival data and its presentation in a form usable by researchers and the public alike
the extensive use of this original research data by an international public outside of academia
Impact is largely achieved and can be demonstrated through the public comments, feedback, and email engagement with users that the research has generated. As the research has been disseminated via the London Lives Project, website traffic is indicative here, as is the construction of Wikis on the London Lives site and the public use of the data-sets produced through the research in the pursuit of genealogical/family history.
Public engagement is further achieved through publication of research findings in popular, non-academic journals, such as Local Population Studies and Family and Community History, in which the research is discussed beyond the academy. All this is reinforced through the Museum Exhibition deriving from the research, and public involvement in conferences informed by it.
