History Reflections

Number of articles per page:

List View
Grid View

8
Jun
2020

A Distant Mirror? Economic Lessons from the Black...

Historians have long argued that the value of their field lay in its applicability to the present day. It serves society best, according to a recent formulation, as a guide that encourages broad perspective...
Read the Article
8
Jun
2020

Precedents for a Pandemic: Reflections on Disease...

Honolulu’s Honuakaha smallpox cemetery, photographed in 2013. The first outbreak of smallpox in 1853 took as many as 6,000 lives, eight percent of the Islands’ roughly 75,000 people. Hundreds are ...
Read the Article
1
Jun
2020

Covid 19 and the struggle for hope and certainty

A few weeks ago I went out for my daily walk on Thursday evening just before 8pm. I had forgotten that since the current lockdown in the UK, this is the time set aside for the weekly Clap for our Carers...
Read the Article
1
Jun
2020

Is It Over Yet?

During recent weeks we have witnessed often abusive gatherings in the United States and Spain demanding that covid-19 restrictions be lifted. Flags are flown, anthems are sung, slogans are cheered, all...
Read the Article
29
May
2020

The United States and the World Health...

In April 2020 U.S. President Donald Trump began to lash out at the World Health Organization, blaming it for what he claimed were missteps, failures, and prevarications in its handling of the coronavirus...
Read the Article
27
May
2020

Invisible Enemies: Witchcraft and the Virus

When politicians started calling the coronavirus an “invisible enemy”, it was obvious that the rhetoric accompanying the pandemic was moving from science to magic. Both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson...
Read the Article
27
May
2020

Saints, Relics and Belief in a Time of Pandemic

For a historian of religion, an interesting aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been witnessing the resurgence of popular interest in religious beliefs and practices across Europe that might have seemed...
Read the Article
22
May
2020

History [and Historians] in Lockdown

Living Lockdown as an academic historian has meant learning a great deal, and fast. There was the move to online teaching and student support, meetings to plan the first academic year with social isolation,...
Read the Article