History Day

Items

• Fakoya collection
  This collection contains studies, reports and campaign material relating to the UK African diaspora and HIV awareness and prevention, sexual health issues and community awareness, c. 1996-2014. The material was collected by Ibidun Fakoya when she worked as part of MESH (Migration, Ethnicity & Sexual Health programme) at University College London. The collection is linked to SIGMA, as SIGMA continued to evaluate the programme after 2009.
• H. T. Alexander: A British Officer Serving in a Newly Independent African Country
  2024 thus marks the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives 60th anniversary. In those intervening years we have gathered the personal papers of over 800 senior defence personnel, and we thought this birthday year was a great opportunity to showcase just some of the items from the collection. This blog spotlights The Archive of Major-General Henry Templer Alexander (1911-1977) from this collection.
• History in the Making – Beilby Porteus and the Abolition of Slavery
  This blog post was written by Dr Karen Attar, Curator of Rare Books and University Art at Senate House Library, University of London.
• Papers of Professor Peter Piot
  The school’s former Director, his archives contains his epidemiological fieldwork in sub-Saharan Africa on HIV/AIDS and the Ebola Virus and his later international role as the Executive-Director of UNAIDS, 1996-2008. They provide access to one of the world’s leading agencies in fighting HIV/AIDS and document significant developments within Piot’s tenure, such as UNAIDS’ establishment, the Doha Declaration on AIDS (2001) and the formation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
• Remembering Amelia Edwards this Pride Month
  This year the EES celebrated Pride by remembering their founder, Amelia B Edwards. Amelia was a Victorian novelist, travel writer, and pioneer of British Egyptology, but her personal life and relations with other women have often been ignored by the field she founded.
• SOAS Library Book Display Video: 'Beyond a Ban: Queer Voices Uncensored'
  In celebration of the Queer History and Heritage Trail, this video showcases how SOAS Library recently promoted its Gender Studies collections through a banned book display: 'Beyond a Ban: Queer Voices Uncensored'.
• The great leveller: humanity’s struggle against infectious disease:
  This exhibition outlines the efforts of various medical practitioners to eradicate a selection of infectious diseases, reflecting the leading role which King’s has long played in medical research and, more recently, in the history of medicine and science.
• The Groundnut Scheme: a colonial failure
  The ill-fated Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme was planned and put into practice in the mid-twentieth century, coming to an abrupt end in 1951. The story of its collapse is a powerful example of why top-down, colonial approaches to agricultural development often struggled to produce the desired results. It raises important questions about why the voices of local agricultural workers and communities were often ignored, and how this contributed to the Scheme’s demise. This online exhibition has been devised to make sense of scattered holdings throughout The MERL collection. Together these groundnut and East Africa-related farming resources can help shed light on this infamous project and its failings. This exhibition was compiled in partnership with undergraduate History students from the University of Reading, including Charles Clemens, Rebekah Fry, Katie Crook, Jakob Longden, and others. We are also grateful for the support of Atenchong Talleh Nkobou from the School of Agriculture, Policy, and Development who provided support and expertise, and to Tim Jerrome and Dr Ollie Douglas for editorial and technical input. You can watch the 1948 film, 'The Groundnut Scheme at Kongwa' via the University of Reading's Virtual Reading Room.