Public history

Public History in European Historical Perspectives

14 September 2023 to 15 September 2023

Thucydides and Herodotus

Thucydides and Herodotus, fathers of (public) history?

International online conference on the long history of public historical practices in Europe.

Join us online for this international conference on the long history of public historical practices in Europe organised by the Public History as new Citizen Science of the Past (PHACS) project. For two days, presenters will explore the variety of historical practices that engaged with the public. From Herodotus and Thucydides in Classical Greece to the Mass Observation Archives in mid-20th century England, with focuses on historical societies, street naming or commemorations in the 19th century, the range of case studies demonstrates the breadth of the field and the long-standing history of what later developed as public history.

 

14-15 September 2023

Online

Please register to receive the Webex link.

Programme

Thursday, 14 September 2023

09.00    
 
Welcome and Introduction by Thomas Cauvin
 
09.15
 

Panel 1 / Antiquity and After: (very) Old Public Historical Practices 
 



 
Herodotus, Thucydides, and the 'making' of public history
Mai Musié and Owen Rees
 
  A long history of public history: Public historical practices in ancient Greece through the epigraphic perspective
Dominika Grzesik 
 
  'Memories of the imagination': theorising public histories of the Roman roads
Catherine Fletcher
 
11.00
 
Break
 
11.15
 

Panel 2 / History and new Public Purposes (1750-1900)
 

  The nineteenth-century archivists as a public historian: examples from the Netherlands
Paul Knevel
 
  Diderot’s Encyclopédie: on the enlightened roots of public history
Mandy Paige-Lovingood
 
13.00
 
Lunch break
 
14.00
 

Panel 3 / Societies, Associations, and Regiments in the 19th and early 20th centuries
 

  Corporate memory cultures in the emergence of public history: British army regiments, local communities and the framing of the past, c. 1880-c.1960
Geoffrey Cubitt
 
  Creation of modern Serbian statehood and practice of public history аt the turn of the 19th into 20th centuries
Aleksandra Kolaković
 
15.45
 
Break
 
16.00
 

Panel 4 / State Public History: Nations, Authoritarianism and Counter-powers
 

  Commemorations and public history of Portuguese empire under Salazar dictatorship regime
Victor Barros
 
  “Substituting false ideas by true ones”. Differing public history practices during the Franco dictatorship
Amaia Lamikiz

 

Friday, 15 September 2023

09.15    
 
Panel 1 / Building Public Narratives: Archives, Schools, and Public Space
 
  Public space, an open-air history book? A chosen past: street names in Brussels
Chantal Kesteloot
 
  Origins and reasons of a public history of education in Italy of the second half of the 19 th century
Giordana Merlo
 
  ‘…so that as complete a record as possible may be available for the future historians’ The Bureau of Military History project in Ireland
Karol Mullaney-Dignam
 
11.00
 
Break
 
11.15
 
Panel 2 / Participatory Public Practices (1940s-1970s)
 
  (Re)Building together – public participation in Polish museums in the interwar period (1918-1939)
Marta Kopiniak
 
  Mass Observation and its archive of everyday life in Britain
Fiona Courage
 
  The Oradour-sur-Glane massacre site: a silent, perennial, ante litteram operation of public history
Francesca Salvatore
 
13.00 End of the conference

 

More information required? Please contact us at phacs@uni.lu.