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Community History Newsletter

June 2022

We have a bumper issue for you this month, with some incredibly exciting events happening in Oxford - not least our very own COMMUNITY LAUNCH on 15 June!

We are delighted to invite you all to the launch evening for the History Faculty's Community History initiative. This free event will take place at the Asian Cultural Centre in Oxford, between 5-7pm on Wednesday 15 June. Join us for an evening of celebration and conversation about the exciting field of community history in the city and county. Hear from community historians, academics, activists and students who have been active leaders in local history work, as well as those who have laid the foundations for the Faculty's new endeavours in this field. We will be also be sharing details of the scope of the Faculty's initiative and launching our new website.

We hope you can join us for this joyous evening! Registration is required, so please book your free ticket here.

In more news, read on to learn about a fascinating new guide to 'becoming a historian' being published by the Institute of Historical Research; plus, there will be a series of fantastic events taking place around Oxford and Oxfordshire this summer, details of which you can find below.

As ever, we'd love to hear from you about your own community history research and local activities! Please do get in touch to share news, build collaborations or develop ideas: you can reach us by email at community@history.ox.ac.uk.

With all best wishes,

Dr Priya Atwal and Professor Stephen Tuck
(The Faculty's Community History Team)

Community History in the Spotlight

Windrush Day will be marked nationally on 22 June, but you can learn all about the history of Oxford's Afro-Caribbean community and participate in local celebrations throughout the second half of June, by joining in with the vibrant Windrush Festival, hosted by a variety of local organisations. Not to be missed especially is the Oxford Windrush Lecture taking place at 6pm on Windrush Day, which you can attend in person at the Pitt Rivers Museum or online via Zoom.

This year's lecture is titled 'Imagining Reparations: From a Criminal Justice Perspective'. It will be presented by Dr Martin Glynn: a criminologist and Winston Churchill Fellow with over 35 years’ experience of working in criminal justice, public health, and educational settings. As a writer, Dr Glynn has produced work for theatre, television, radio drama, children’s writing, and data storytelling. He is currently a lecturer in criminology at Birmingham City University.

Full details of the festival programme can be found on the Oxford Windrush Group's Facebook page.

On our Reading List...

"Becoming a historian is hard – and can be weird." So say Professors Penelope Corfield and Tim Hitchcock in Becoming A Historian, an 'informal guide' that aims to de-mystify the process of working as a historian and to extend the hand of friendship to all seeking to undertake a history research project. This work will be of particular interest for independent historians or anyone embarking on an MA/PhD. It is available for free as an Open Access PDF, or for £15 as a paperback.

Get your copy here. We'd love to hear from anyone who'd like to write a review about this book for the Community History blog!

What's on in Oxford & Oxfordshire

This Jubilee bank holiday weekend, join in with a celebration of Oxfordshire's African diaspora heritage at Blackbird Leys Park, on Saturday 4 June. With food, music, art, playful activities for children, and a chance to meet local African-heritage authors, this event has something to enjoy for people of all ages!

Contact the organiser, Euton Daley, for more information about the programme or to set up a stall: email eutondaley0@gmail.com.

People of colour have been part of the Magdalen College community for at least 175 years. Their experiences have, however, often been marginalised in accounts of the College’s past. This exhibition begins to explore what fragmentary sources from the Magdalen archives can tell us about the lives and identities of some of the College’s students and staff since the nineteenth century. This exhibition emerges from the work of five student interns whose diverse skills and perspectives shape the stories told.

The exhibition is on display at Magdalen's Old Library on Wednesday afternoons, 2-4.30pm, until 24 October. Entry to the exhibition is free, but the College may charge some visitors an entrance fee (Oxford residents, owners of an Oxford University or OUP card, and children under the age of 7 can all be admitted for free). An online exhibition will also soon be available to view. Find out more on the College website.

On 15 June, you can enjoy tea, cake and a guided curator's tour of the 'Of Ordinary Things' Exhibition' currently on display at the Museum of Oxford (MOx). Curated by the Iraqi Women Art and War (IWAW) museum group, this exhibition is free to enter and be will displayed at MOx until 24 September 2022. The tea and tour will be available between 10-11.30am on 15 June: book your ticket here. To find out more about the exhibition, visit the MOx website.

Read the June news roundup from the Oxfordshire Local History Association (OLHA) to learn about the latest opportunities and activities for local historians to get involved in across the county. You can become a member for just £1 a month. This month's news highlights include the opening of a new exhibition, Children and Military Lives - Stories of Adventure, Family, and Exile, at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock. The exhibition runs from 2 June until 24 November, and poignantly tells the stories of Oxfordshire children impacted by conflict, past and present.

The Uncomfortable Oxford team has recently launched a new blog series called 'Uncomfortable Education', about the teaching of 'contested/difficult' histories in the classroom. You can also book a walking tour on one of two new routes in Oxford:

Hidden Histories: this tour highlights the many ways in which women have historically used and shared the urban space of Oxford; how masculinities have shaped and been shaped by the University; and discusses queer experiences in the city.
History of Medicine: this tour asks questions about the lasting impact of disease and the way in which imperialism, conflict, and inequality have helped shape the development of modern medicine.

Our new website: launching soon!

We will be launching our Community History digital hub on the History Faculty website soon! You'll be able to take a first look at our launch event on 15 June and we will circulate the website details thereafter, in our next newsletter.

We continue to welcome your ideas and contributions for making this digital space as reflective as possible of the richness and variety of Oxford/Oxfordshire's community history activity. Please get in touch if you have:

A recent or ongoing local/community history project that you'd like to have featured on our site, with its own profile page. To set up your page, we'd need you to submit a summary of your project (of no more than 400 words), an email contact and any relevant web links for your work, plus any pictures/videos/audio that you can share with us to make your page as dynamic as possible!
Ideas for a blog post on 'ways of doing community history.' We are looking to publish short written pieces (of up to 1000 words), on a rolling basis, reflecting on the meaning, practicalities and value of working in community history. If you might be interested, please send us a short summary (of up to 100 words) of your ideas. We welcome submissions from writers from any part of our city and county.

Please email your ideas to community@history.ox.ac.uk - we look forward to hearing from you!

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community@history.ox.ac.uk

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History Faculty · George Street · Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 2RL · United Kingdom