Articles about 'social history'

A rare collection of 300-year-old petitions gives voice to the forgotten women who cared for England’s most vulnerable children while battling their local authorities.

On World Population Day, University of Cambridge researchers bust some of the biggest myths about life in England since the Middle Ages, challenging assumptions about everything from sex before marriage to migration and the health/wealth gap.

Over 100 letters sent to French sailors, but never delivered, have been read for the first time since they were written in 1757-8. The letters include heart-breaking love letters and evidence of family quarrels. The letters were seized by Britain’s Royal Navy during the Seven Years’ War and forgotten about until historian Renaud Morieux studied them.

A new study examines the words and behaviour of older people who went on to take their own lives in 18th-century England.

Treasures from the world’s largest and most important collection of medieval Jewish manuscripts – chronicling 1,000 years of history in Old Cairo – have gone on display in Cambridge today for a six-month-long exhibition at Cambridge University Library.

After years of being overlooked as a film genre, amateur cinema is finally being recognised by academics as a form that merits serious study in its own right, offering a surprisingly candid eye on people and the past. Now a new research network will, for the first time, bring their work together in one place.

April 2012 marks the bicentenary of the high-water mark of the Luddite rebellion – but new research suggests that the movement may be celebrated for the wrong reasons.

In medieval times Stourbridge Common was the site of one of Europe’s largest fairs – a bustling centre for shopping, eating and revelry, offering temptations of every kind. An Open Cambridge event on Saturday 10 September will tell the fascinating 800-year-old story of Stourbridge Fair.

From the fictional Downton Abbey to the modest suburban semi, domestic service has had a prominent role in the story, whether real or imagined, of British society over the past 100 years. In Knowing Their Place: Domestic Service in Twentieth-Century Britain, Cambridge historian Dr Lucy Delap navigates the shifting drama played out in that most intimate and domestic workplace: the home.