Better Get Out of My Way

(4 p.); 34cm

Tropes and Trench Cakes: The Home Front in the Media and Community History

The recent WW1 'fest' has provided a multitude of different engagements with the history of this conflict by media and community groups. The relationship between these histories and academic history is not unproblematic. It provides space for a greater emphasis on the home front but there are questions to be asked about the politics and the accuracy of such history. It is up to academics to find ways of working with popular histories which ensure that troublesome knowledge of the conflict continues to be explored

Introduction: Home Fronts, Gender War and Conflict

Introduction to special edition of Womens History Review special edition on Gender War and Conflic

Entitlement and the Shaping of First World War Commemorative Histories

The four years of commemorative outpouring and activities in response to the Centenary of the First World War have led to the production of a multiplicity of amateur and professional, academic, media and community histories of the conflict. These can be seen as exciting examples of what Raphael Samuel (2012) once optimistically described as history made by a thousand hands, which can democratize the past. However, all histories are framed by the cultural milieu in which they are produced and the centenary of the first industrialized conflict, which cost the lives of millions across the world1 is taking place in Britain, a fractured country, still reeling from the aftermath of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, which heralded in austerity politics and a restructuring of welfare provision. The centenary has coincided with the rise of UKIP and 2016’s divisive referendum about Britain’s membership of the EU. The commemoration of a conflict, which has a significant place in British national narratives, is taking place against a backdrop of hotly contested debates about who exactly is entitled to see themselves as part of the nation, and who is entitled to support from the national purse if they are in crisis. This has an inevitable, though perhaps, unintentional consequence on the selectivity and the silences in the histories of the First World War that have emerged. My own recent work with heritage organizations and community groups as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded Voices of War and Peace World War One Engagement Centre, 2 suggests that in the present political climate, despite the best intentions and determined efforts of many cultural agents, some hands were m

Rent Arrears, Food Shortages and Evacuees: How War Enters the Worcester Home in Two World Wars

The strong military traditions of Worcester may mean the city’s engagement in two world wars is often thought about in terms of the soldiers or even the ammunition produced at Blackpole Munitions Works. The ways in which both wars impacted the more mundane lives of the majority of women who were housewives have received less attention. As housewives, daughters, sisters or domestic servants, women undertook the lion’s share of the domestic and emotional labours needed to maintain homes, communities and neighbourhoods. This was played out at a local level, shaped by the geographical, economic and cultural specificity of not only regions but towns and cities. There were as many different home fronts as there were battle fronts; thus, Worcester residents experienced the privations and problems of twentieth-century large-scale international warfare, through their local home front. This contextualized case study of Worcester explores the financial challenges housewives faced, their problems with food provisioning and the care of evacuees to argue that both wars entered the home in a multitude of ways. It provides evidence of how, the boundary between public and private spheres was blurred, as in wartime the state interfered in the domestic life to an unprecedented degree

Worcestershire’s Women: Local Studies and the Gender Politics of the First World War and its Legacy

On 6 February 1918, the Representation of the People Act was passed; it enfranchised all men over twenty‐one and women over the age of thirty if either they or their husband met the requisite property qualifications. In public and media history this legislation was regarded as a reward for women's contribution to the war effort and evidence that one of the legacies of the First World War was a range of new opportunities for women.1 This historical narrative has remained stubbornly in place during the four years of the First World War centenary commemoration, although it disregards the degree to which women's experience of the conflict was infinitely varied, influenced by class, age, marital status and a multitude of other factors including whether women were urban or rural dwellers. This article makes the case for the importance of local studies, which have the potential to remind us that a national narrative is not necessarily the national narrative and that global wars have local and personal consequences at the time and in the years that follow. It is, after all, in the mundane and the everyday where gender politics play out, in the multiple, sometimes minute, interactions reliant upon the exercise and internalization of power in intimate and very personal spaces. It is in the politics of the home, the street, the workplace or leisure spaces that power relations are worked through, challenged, stretched and reinterpreted

Reading the silences: Trudie Denman and the women’s movement in the first half of the twentieth century

This article discusses the challenges of researching a biography of the personal, professional and political life of Lady Gertrude Denman (1884–1954). ‘Trudie’ as she was familiarly known, took on leading roles in a number of organisations, including the Women’s Institute Movement, the National Birth Control Council and the Women’s Land Army. She also provided financial support to many organisations, including the Liberal party, to which she was politically affiliated. She was a skilled chair of meetings and conferences, with an acute eye for procedure; an enabler, facilitator and motivator who encouraged co-operation and smoothed ruffled feathers as she cajoled self-righteous firebrands with difficult personalities to work together and ensured ordinary working-class people had a voice. We explore her now largely forgotten role in these organisations and argue that, as the ultimate pragmatist, she favoured and getting things done by co-operation over polemics and grandstanding. We also address the many complexities of her personal life, including her relationship with Margaret Pyke. In navigating the many ‘silences’ that surround her personal and professional life, we seek to understand the relationship between her personal experiences and her practical, political and professional roles as an activist in the contemporary women’s movement

Enhancing the Employability of Humanities Postgraduates: a Students as Academic Partners Project Report

In an increasingly competitive employment market, postgraduates need to demonstrate more than the ‘skills, knowledge, attitudes and experiences that are closely associated with the research process’ (Golovushkina & Milligan, 2013: 199). Yet results indicate that Worcester postgraduate students remain unaware of the full range of opportunities that exist alongside postgraduate study, and how this affects their subsequent employability. This research, undertaken with humanities post-graduate students at University of Worcester, aims to contribute to discussions about how to enhance the employability of humanities postgraduates through extra-curricular activities. The project was implemented as a Students -As-Partners-in-Learning-Project, using action research; the issue was identified, base-line data collected and this resulted in the creation of a postgraduate blog incorporating suggestions of possible opportunitie s and links to relevant websites for further information. Informed by this research, the student partners then took active roles in the organization of the Women’s History Network National Conference, ‘Home Fronts: Gender, War and Conflict’, hosted at the University of Worcester in September 2014, to broaden their existing skills base and then to connect this involvement to their professional development through a group CV review. The participants’ own experiences of wider engagement can therefore illuminat e new ways for understanding employability in relation to humanities postgraduate students

Identifying acne treatment uncertainties via a James Lind Alliance Priority Setting Partnership

Objectives: The Acne Priority Setting Partnership (PSP) was set up to identify and rank treatment uncertainties by bringing together people with acne, and professionals providing care within and beyond the National Health Service (NHS). Setting: The UK with international participation. Participants: Teenagers and adults with acne, parents, partners, nurses, clinicians, pharmacists, private practitioners. Methods: Treatment uncertainties were collected via separate online harvesting surveys, embedded within the PSP website, for patients and professionals. A wide variety of approaches were used to promote the surveys to stakeholder groups with a particular emphasis on teenagers and young adults. Survey submissions were collated using keywords and verified as uncertainties by appraising existing evidence. The 30 most popular themes were ranked via weighted scores from an online vote. At a priority setting workshop, patients and professionals discussed the 18 highest-scoring questions from the vote, and reached consensus on the top 10. Results: In the harvesting survey, 2310 people, including 652 professionals and 1456 patients (58% aged 24 y or younger), made submissions containing at least one research question. After checking for relevance and rephrasing, a total of 6255 questions were collated into themes. Valid votes ranking the 30 most common themes were obtained from 2807 participants. The top 10 uncertainties prioritised at the workshop were largely focused on management strategies, optimum use of common prescription medications and the role of nondrug based interventions. More female than male patients took part in the harvesting surveys and vote. A wider range of uncertainties were provided by patients compared to professionals. Conclusions: Engaging teenagers and young adults in priority setting is achievable using a variety of promotional methods. The top 10 uncertainties reveal an extensive knowledge gap about widely used interventions and the relative merits of drug versus non-drug based treatments in acne management