mortiz070

  Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in partnership with the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the British Academy, Being Human is a national festival promoting public engagement with humanities research. Between 17 and 23 November 2018 , the School of Culture is hosting a series of public talks looking at this year’s theme of ‘Origins and Endings’ through the lens of Sunderland’s local history. The topics range from the Wearside origins of English republicanism to the end of heavy industry in the city. All are free to attend and open to all. Click on the links to find out about these events. The North East Coast, the Sea and its Dangers (Dr Peter Hayes) A Place Fit for Heroes? The End of the First World War in the North East (Dr André Keil) Suffrage and Beyond in Sunderland: The City’s First Female MP  (Dr Sarah Hellawell)   The Lilburne Family and the Origins of English Republicanism (Dr Delphine Doucet)

New Perspectives on the Great War, 6 December 2017, 4.30pm, Reg Vardy RV213 Ann-Marie Foster (Northumbria University): Family and Individual Remembrance as a Way of Breaching the Divide During the First World War, 750,000 British soldiers perished. As Adrian Gregory has argued, this means that roughly 10 per cent of the British population lost a close relative. Disasters provide a useful theoretical framework for examining experiences of loss in the Great War. Much like the loss of a Pal’s battalion, an explosion in a colliery could decimate a mining community. Miners often lost close friends and relatives, and newly created widows grieved using largely the same artefacts and ephemera as those who lost a loved one in war. Similarly, for those directly involved in the disaster, men who volunteered for rescue parties would have had to confront the mutilated remains of their companions, if the disaster was such that bodies could be recovered at all. This paper therefore explores individ...