/ 2024

Year: 2024

IAS Research Development Project: '"Gaming" History?'

Despite the global importance of the gaming industry, and the centrality of video-games and contemporary boardgames as cultural artefacts in the modern world, historians beyond the sub-discipline of Historical Game Studies have often failed to consider games seriously as historical sources, while game-industry professionals do not necessarily consider explicit historical methodologies when designing games set in the past.Read more...

IAS Research Development Funding Award: '"Gaming" History?'

Helen and Dr. Ladan Cockshut have just been awarded Research Development funding from Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study for a project which will bring together academic historians and game developers to see what each group can learn from the other.Read more...

'A (Partial) Encyclopedia of the Fasces'

Review of T. Corey Brennan's The Fasces: A History of Ancient Rome's Most Dangerous Political Symbol (New York: Oxford University Press), Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 32 (1), Spring/Summer 2024, 177-91.

The fasces—the bundled axes and rods which symbolized power and punishment in ancient Rome—have often exerted a powerful hold on the Western imagination, long before their adoption by Mussolini led to their co-option for the term “fascist”, with all of its stark, unsavory, and brutal political connotations.Read more...

Review of Review of 'Heritage and Nationalism' by Chiara Bonacchi

Review of Chiara Bonacchi, Heritage and Nationalism: Understanding Populism through Big Data (London: UCL Press, 2022), Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 30 (3), September 2024, 837-8.

The politicization of the past has long been a key concern for archaeologists, historians, and heritage professionals. However, with the recent advent of social media, new opportunities to research the resonance of distant pasts in populist rhetoric now abound – if such sources can be harnessed appropriately.Read more...

Oral History und die Ziele des Projekts

Invited paper, presented at a workshop on 'Forgotten Voices', Institut für Geschichtsdidaktik und Public History, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, 26 September 2024.Read more...

Reflecting on the Project: Recording / Archiving / Exploring Forgotten Voices of Former Pupils from Nazi Elite-Schools

Invited presentation, presented jointly with Alan Fentiman (film-maker) and Alex Chisholm-Loxley (composer), at a workshop on 'Forgotten Voices', Institut für Geschichtsdidaktik und Public History, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, 25 September 2024.Read more...

Filming Trip to Germany Featured in the Local PressFilming Trip to Germany Featured in the Local Press

In September 2024, Helen and film-maker Alan Fentiman undertook further filming for Helen's forthcoming documentary project on the history of the Napolas, focused on an archive of video interviews with former Napola-pupils. The film-crew's visit to Illenau was featured in the local press, including the Acherner Rench-Zeitung and the Badische Neueste Nachrichten –Read more...

Election to Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society

In September 2024, Helen was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS).Read more...

Fascism, Nazism, and the Lure of Mythic Antiquity

Guest lecture, presented at the Institute of History, University of San Sebastián, Santiago de Chile, 22 August 2024.Read more...

Nostalgia for a Non-Existent Past? Fascist and Neo-fascist Appeals to Classical Antiquity

Presented at an international online workshop on 'Politicised Nostalgias', University of Northampton, 12 July 2024.Read more...