History news
13 April 2026
Muhammed Hasanov, who is in the final stage of his PhD and also works as a qualitative researcher at the University of Oxford, has published an article entitled “The Forgotten Turkish Graves at Liverpool Necropolis and Mehmed Kamil Bey’s Attempt to Establish a Muslim Cemetery in the City” in Études balkaniques, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences since 1964. The short version of this article is also published on TRT World.
The article explores the largely unknown Ottoman graves in Liverpool Necropolis dating back to the Crimean War, a site that today forms part of a public park known as Grant Gardens. It also examines how the young Ottoman diplomat Mehmed Kamil, Consul General in Liverpool - who later briefly served as Ottoman ambassador to Bulgaria in 1908 - sought to use these graves as a political tool.
26 January 2026
Written evidence submitted by Dr Dan Feather has been published as part of the government inquiry entitled ‘Soft power: a strategy for UK success?’ The evidence, produced in collaboration with a team of scholars who are part of the Historians of Cultural Diplomacy (HCD) research network, looked specifically at the importance of terminology when designing a soft power ‘strategy’, as well as highlighting the British Council’s historic role as the key facilitator of the UK’s cultural relations with other nations.
15 January 2026
Dr Mike Benbough-Jackson, a historian of the anomalous, publishes his second piece of work on the fairy folk. In the Fairy Investigation Society Newsletter 23 (January 2026), Mike investigates the case of Colonel William North who saw fairies in a London hotel room in 1890. Using press reports, the census and military records, Mike suggests that the entities could have followed North from west Wales and/or south Asia.
12 December 2025
Earlier this week, Dr Isabel Robinson officially launched the website for Exhibiting Empire, a new digital resource exploring nineteenth-century exhibitions in Liverpool and their connections to Britain’s imperial past. The project, which takes the form of a digital hub, offers public access to rare archival material, together with historical context on the Liverpool Mechanics’ Institution, one of LJMU’s founding bodies, and the ‘World Fair Movement.’ Although a boon to the developing creative and commercial identity of LJMU, these fairs also had a darker side, often promoting visions of racial superiority and imperial grandeur. The material digitised as part of this project therefore sheds fresh light on how art, industry, and global objects were displayed in Liverpool as a means to shape public knowledge and to support imperial attitudes at a time when LJMU was establishing itself as a centre of learning.
30 October 2025
Dr Dan Feather co-organised an online workshop focussing on histories of cultural diplomacy, which took place on 23 and 24 October. The workshop featured speakers from 12 countries across three continents and had a significant international audience beyond those that were speaking.
This event was the first organised by the ‘Historians of Cultural Diplomacy’ research network, of which Dan is a founding member. The network stemmed from a hybrid event Dan organised at LJMU in February 2025 which was funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust.
Plans are in place to publish a special issue in a leading journal in the field drawing on the papers delivered at this event, with Dan acting as co-editor.
20 October 2025
Professor Gillian O'Brien employed a powerful Irish proverb: Ní neart go cur le chéile – there is no strength without coming together – at the UN's World Food Forum in Rome, where she spoke on the AHRC-funded ‘Sharing Lands’ project, on 14 October. It explores a food solidarity friendship between the Choctaw Nation and Ireland, dating back to 1847, when the Americans sent aid during the Great Famine.
26 September 2025
At the beginning of October, Professor Gillian O’Brien will be giving two talks on her research. Firstly, Gillian will deliver an online talk on 3 October for the National Archives as part of their 'Finding Ireland' series.
This talk, which is free to attend, can be found on the National Archives website titled 'Ireland's Undiscovered Past: the 1800s’.
Then, on 4 October, Gillian will be speaking at the Tipperary Museum of Hidden History as part of their 'Beyond Belief' series, which focuses on beliefs, customs and traditions in areas such as health, death and burial, folklore and religion.
Her presentation, "The Irishman's house is his coffin: Death and Burial in Ireland", will explore the Irish obsession with death, funerals and the afterlife.
22 September 2025
Dr Mike Benbough-Jackson has had his latest research published in the magazine Haunted (47) where he traces the relationship between technology and the supernatural on the London to Birmingham railway line during 1838.
Mike is also giving a talk about his research into the Liverpool leprechauns of 1964 to the Liverpool History Society on Tuesday 18 November at 11am. You can read his article on this subject in the August edition of the Fortean Times (460).
17 September 2025
Dr Andrea Livesey's book "Voices of the Formerly Enslaved in Louisiana: The WPA Narratives" has now been released. The 592-page volume presents for the first time the complete, contextualised interviews with formerly enslaved people conducted in Louisiana during the 1930s Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project.
Over fifteen years, Andrea painstakingly reassembled the fragmented transcripts from various archives throughout Louisiana, providing crucial insights into how Black Louisianians experienced enslavement, resistance, and freedom.
The collection includes unique interviews in Kouri Vini (Louisiana Creole) and Louisiana French, alongside descriptions of Voodoo practices and community medicine.
15 September 2025
Dr Mike Benbough-Jackson has been appointed Research Director for The Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP). The association has been engaged in attempts to explain the origin and meaning of the strange since 1981.
If anyone would like to promote their research or suggest a project, please email Mike Benbough-Jackson. The association's webinar series can be watched by non-members on YouTube and is also available on Spotify.
9 September 2025
Dr Dan Feather delivered an invited lecture and question and answer session to civil servants and lawyers in the UK Cabinet Office (CO) on 27 August. The talk was focussed on Dan’s research into the Western Cape independence movement in South Africa and was delivered as part of the ‘Constitution School’ series of lectures for staff working in the CO’s Union and Devolution Directorate.
15 August 2025
Earlier this week, Dr Lucie Matthews-Jones held in-person workshops for the Divergent Minds in the Archive project in the Liverpool Records Office, aiming to explore neurodivergent experiences of archives and archival research. Lucie commented that participants ‘had some wonderful conservations on how to make archives accessible and the barriers neurodivergent researchers face’.
8 July 2025
What an absolute delight it was to celebrate our Class of 2025 History graduates today! We are confident that these fine young people will go on to achieve great things and make the world a better place!
30 June 2025
LJMU History hosted the annual Britain and the World Conference on 25-27 June 2025. Our colleagues Professor James Crossland, Dr Christopher Vaughan, Dr Andre Keil, Dr Dan Feather, Dr Percy Leung and Dr Isabel Robinson all presented fascinating papers based on their research. It was very pleasing that our PhD students Samantha Baker, Lukasz Grzymski, Muhammed Hasanov, Kieran Kerr and Scott Cairns also spoke at this conference!
12 June 2025
Huge congratulations to our colleagues Dr Laura Gillespie, Dr Louise Coyne, and Dr Percy Leung, who were all nominated as ‘Rising Stars’ in the annual Faculty of Society and Culture Teaching Excellence Awards. As the nominations stated, they made exceptional contributions to our department and the teaching of our students. We are particularly delighted that Percy won the award in recognition of his outstanding commitment to our students!
5 June 2025
Dr Kate Ballantyne, who recently published her book Radical Volunteers: Dissent, Desegregation, and Student Power in Tennessee, appeared on an American Campus Podcast to discuss her work.
28 May 2025
The Research and Innovation Services at LJMU will fund a further year of the Disabled Research Project, which is led by our colleagues Dr Lucie Matthews-Jones and Dr Ria Cheyne. They will continue to look specifically into neurodivergent researcher experiences at our university and hope to provide a greater opportunity and space to reflect on what it means to be a neurodivergent academic researcher at LJMU.
19 May 2025
On 17 May, the Centre for Port and Maritime History held a one-day conference focusing on the war at sea at the end of the Second World War, reflecting on lessons learnt, consequences and impact. This event was organised by Professor Nick White and our former Subject Leader Dr David Clampin and it was held in the Quaker Meeting House in central Liverpool.
16 May 2025
At the annual Liverpool John Moores University Students’ Union Awards last night, Dr Percy Leung received strong endorsement and nomination for his teaching efforts. He was one of three staff in the university to be on the final shortlist for ‘Outstanding Teacher’ at LJMU.
11 May 2025
On 9-10 May, the annual conference of the Historical Association took place in Liverpool. Our colleagues Professor Gillian O’Brien, Professor James Crossland, Dr Andrea Livesey and Dr Andre Keil all delivered papers at this occasion. This annual conference is the biggest convention for history teachers, researchers and practitioners in Britain. It’s a fantastic forum to discuss new ideas!
7 April 2025
Dr Andre Keil’s book Emergency Powers and the Home Fronts in Britain and Germany during the First World War is now published by Oxford University Press. The official book launch will take place in the John Foster Building on 28 October 2025 and copies of the book can be ordered on global.oup.com.
14 March 2025
Professor Nick White delivered the Anthony J. Stockwell Honorary Lecture yesterday at the Royal Asiatic Society. His lecture was entitled ‘The decolonisation of Malaysia and Singapore: A maritime perspective’.
28 January 2025
The Black Maternal Health Project, of which Dr Andrea Livesey is a member, won the LJMU Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Public Engagement!
6 December 2024
It was a real delight to welcome students from 11 local schools to LJMU as we hosted the regional heat for the national ‘Great Debate’ competition by the Historical Association. We were thoroughly impressed by the quality of the research and confidence of the presentations by all participants. Good luck to the winner for the next round of the competition!
1 November 2024
In the build up to one of the most tense and contested US elections in living memory, with so much at stake, two of our colleagues focusing on American history, Dr Andrea Livesey and Dr Laura Gillespie, talked about the election from the perspective of their areas of research. Their comments can be seen on YouTube.
21 October 2024
Dr Malcolm Craig travelled to Vienna on 11-13 October for the Future & Reality of Gaming Conference, part of the wider Game City events in the Austrian capital. He presented on an aspect of his ongoing research into table top role-playing games, the Cold War, and ‘the bomb’ with a paper entitled ‘Histories of Wars That Never Were: Table top role-playing games and the Cold War nuclear threat’. You can watch his talk on YouTube.
17 October 2024
Professor James Crossland has now officially launched his latest book Rogue Agent: From Secret Plots to Psychological Warfare, the Untold Story of Robert Bruce Lockhart, published by Elliott & Thompson.
1 August 2024
Professor Gillian O’Brien’s chapter ‘Captive audience: Irish prison museums and their visitors’ was recently published in the book Public History in Ireland: Difficult Histories edited by Leonie Hannan and Olwen Purdue. In her work, Professor O’Brien examined the Irish Prison Museums, who goes to visit them and the reasons for visiting them. Her focus was primarily on Crumlin Road Gaol, Kilmainham Gaol, Wicklow Gaol and Cork City Gaol.