Dr Stephen E. Mawdsley

A big thanks and congratulations to Bristol University PhD student Jenny Hutton for all her hard work on this important research project.

Starved for Light A wide-ranging history of rickets tracks the disease’s emergence, evolution, and eventual treatment—and exposes the backstory behind contemporary worries about vitamin D deficiency.   Rickets, a child...

Available now wherever you buy your #history of rickets books, including directly from the U. Chicago Press site! 🗃️https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo236934960.html

Fascinating stuff from the CMS' own Dr Evan Jones!

#ScholarSunday Thread 242 Published on September 21, 2025

Pleased as punch to see included in Ben Railton's @americanstudier.bsky.social #ScholarSunday this week my blog post about why rickets (and other deficiency diseases) should be reportable!
americanstudier.substack.com/p/scholarsun...

A new semester means a new exciting round of CMS seminars! Here's a sneak peek of what we have to look forward to over the next few weeks!

September: erc-grants | News and features | University of Bristol

🥳 Congratulations to Dr @rebeccabuxton.bsky.social (Philosophy) & Dr @helenfewlass.bsky.social (@bristolantharch.bsky.social) who have received highly prestigious ERC Starting Grants!

Read more about Project LEAD led by Rebecca & Project ARRIVAL led by Helen 👇

www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2025/se...

Maintaining Islam, ‘Moroccanness’ and white privilege: social perception and experiences of mixed individuals in Morocco from the colonial era to the present This interdisciplinary article examines mixed families in Morocco from French colonial rule to the present day, focusing on experiences and perception of mixed individuals within Morocco. Our compa...

🚨new article on mixed identities in Morocco🚨 how did mixed families construct their identity and navigate discrimination in the 20th and 21st century? 🇲🇦 find out here, baby…

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Grief affects us all, and yet people often struggle to talk about death & dying. 🦋

@goodgrieffest.bsky.social is a social venture spinout at @bristoluni.bsky.social that brings people together to talk about death & grief, providing information, support & a sense of community

More 👉 brnw.ch/21wVqxR

In this new blog post, Bristol History student Hannah Clark reflects on her summer internship working with Professor Sumita Mukherjee on a public digital resource called ‘South Asian Britain: Connections and Networks.’ Read more here: historiansatbristol.blogs.bristol.ac.uk

💥 COMING UP: Join Suzannah V Evans (@bristolunienglish.bsky.social) for the launch of her debut poetry collection, Under the Blue

Told through a series of prose poems & postcards, Under the Blue is a meditation on humanity & empathy

📅 Fri 5 September, 7-9pm
📍 @bookhaus.bsky.social
🎟️ bit.ly/3V9L7Nv

Historians in their robes

Bristol historians all dressed up for graduation. It’s an absolute highlight of the year getting to celebrate the many achievements of our history students!

A screencap of the front page of the website.

Big news - the IGRCT has a new website! We've migrated to igrct.blogs.bristol.ac.uk. Watch this space for exciting new event listings in the upcoming academic year.

Ships don’t lie Sixteenth-century Europe faced a significant gap between the desire to traverse the globe and the ability to build safe, seaworthy ships. New trade routes were opening up; new countries were coming to...

'A perceptive critical study that recognizes the power of images and the need to explain them.'

Dr Laurence Publicover's (@bristolunienglish.bsky.social) book, Fathoming the Deep in English Renaissance Tragedy, is reviewed in this week's @thetls.bsky.social

www.the-tls.com/literature/l...

Map of the British Indian Empire from Imperial Gazetteer of India, 1909. Gwalior is located in one of India’s Princely States, coloured yellow on the map, which were semi-autonomous territories.

Example of a letter envelope with Indian stamps consulted in Ellen’s latest research, courtesy of the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge.

✍️ Dr @ellencssmith.bsky.social (@uobrishistory.bsky.social) introduces us to her Imperial Letters project which explores how the correspondence of British families in India shaped public opinion of empire in the 19th & 20th centuries

Find out more this South Asian Heritage Month 👉 bit.ly/45chAIX

I’m very pleased to working on this new project seeking to embed silenced voices in the new Natural History GCSE curriculum. This is a fabulous collaboration with Rising Arts Agency, colleagues in the School of Education and Bristol Museum. Thanks to @hellobrigstow.bsky.social.

Congratulations to the organizers of The Moving Past. The site offers an interesting collection of digitized archival films from the 1910s-1920s. www.themovingpast.com

Come join us for our first @remakingbritain.bsky.social project event to launch the South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories digital resource, a partnership of @uobartsmatter.bsky.social @qmul.bsky.social @uobrishistory.bsky.social
@bristolunienglish.bsky.social @britishlibrary.bsky.social

Congratulations!

Hear more about Vanessa Northington Gamble’s work from this time - on wrong- doing and ethics - here: ethicsinpractice.net/episode/apol...

Reconstructing the legacies of colonial detention: Digital heritage, memory, and the Mau Mau Emergency, 1952–1960 - Bethany Rebisz, 2025 This article examines the legacies of colonial detention in Kenya and considers the adaptive digital heritage practices used by the Museum of British Colonialis...

🔊 New Article: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... @memorystudies.bsky.social

Medieval play to be performed for first time in 500 years Audience members can expect "a unique experience combining feast and drama"

We're in Bristol 24/7! www.bristol247.com/culture/thea...

Vivian Kong, "Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910–45" (Cambridge UP, 2023) New Books in History · Episode

My first podcast experience! Many thanks to Miranda & @NewBooksNetwork for inviting me to talk about my book Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910-45 on @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social.

Listen on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/6ZVI...

/Apple
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

Book cover

I'm looking forward to reading this book over the summer! Congratulations to Tom Arnold-Forster, a Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford, for bringing this amazing intellectual biography to print. #ushistory #walterlippmann #biography

Medically Manufactured: The Story of Retrolental Fibroplasia By Jenny Hutton ~ When Lula Hardaway was told her 6-week-old baby Stevie was blind, doctors were unable give her an answer as to why. Born two months early in Saginaw, Michigan in May 1950, Stevie …

Congratulations to Bristol PhD student, Jenny Hutton, on her recent NLM blog posting about her historical research. @uobartsmatter.bsky.social @uobrishistory.bsky.social

Medically Manufactured: The Story of Retrolental Fibroplasia
circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2025/06/12/m...

Screen image of the introduction

Thanks to editor in chief, Jacalyn Duffin, for overseeing this new Oxford Bibliographies medical history collection. I was pleased to offer a starting point for research into the history of rehabilitation and disability. @oxfordunipress.bsky.social
www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/docu...

📻 Dr Amy Edwards (@uobrishistory.bsky.social) joins David Dimbleby on BBC Radio 4 #InvisibleHands to discuss the use of advertising to promote Margaret Thatcher's BT privatisation campaign in the 1980s

Listen to the full programme 👉 bit.ly/4dYngsF

@somsproject.bsky.social

Hannah Rose Woods · Tactile Dreams The British aversion to touching wasn’t limited to the Victorian era: comparative studies confirm that we continue to...

'Intimate Subjects includes some irresistible case studies that illustrate the myriad ways in which touch was navigated and examined in the period.'

Dr Simeon Koole's (@uobrishistory.bsky.social) book, Intimate Subjects, is reviewed in this week's @lrb.co.uk

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

@victoriabates.bsky.social kindly interviewed @kellygcb.bsky.social & I for her new podcast on impact activities at Uni of Bristol. We talk about the ongoing collaboration with Professor Sam Goodman & re-launched series of talks: Think While You Drink

humsimpact.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2025/05/29/t...

The interplay of life and literature in medieval romance Valentine’s Day is essentially a medieval invention. Chaucer’s dream poem The Parliament of Fowls, which describes a gathering of birds who have met on

'Medieval men and women rarely wrote their own love letters, relying instead on the services of scribes.'

Prof Ad Putter (@bristolunienglish.bsky.social) & Myra Stokes's co-edited critical anthology, Medieval Love Letters, is reviewed in this week's TLS

www.the-tls.co.uk/history/medi...

A fantastic line up- including our very own Sim Koole’s Intimate Subjects!