The Regional History Centre runs a free, monthly evening seminar with our partners at M Shed, Bristol.
Seminars are usually held every third Thursday of the month, but please check our programme for variations.
Current Seminar Programme
Our 2023-2024 season of seminars are being held live online. Please follow the event link for further details and bookings.
April 18 2024: ‘Walking Medieval Bristol.’ Speakers: Helen Fulton, Chair and Professor of Medieval Literature, University of Bristol; and Evan Jones, Associate Professor in Economic History, University of Bristol. Event Details and Booking
March 21 2024: ‘Colston’s Last Journey‘. Speaker: Ralph Hoyte, poet, writer and located audio designer, Visiting Fellow of the Regional History Centre at UWE. Event Details
February 16 2024: ‘From Bristol to Botany Bay‘. Speakers: Sheila Hannon, Show of Strength Theatre; Lynda Rooke, President of Equity; Dr Rose Wallis, University of the West of England. Event Details
You can see the film ‘From Bristol to Botany Bay’, made by Show of Strength and the Regional History Centre in partnership with women at HMP Eastwood Park here.
January 18 2024: ‘Recovering Britain’s Amateur Theatrical Past 1789-1914: a South West England Perspective’. Speaker: David Coates, University of Warwick. Event Details
December 14 2023: ‘The Museum of Totterdown’. Speaker: John O’Connor.
November 16 2023: ‘Boots the Chemist, shoplifting and the Bristol Experiment– cutting retail crime in the post-war era, 1960-71.’ Speaker: Jack Moss, University of Nottingham.
October 19 2023: ‘Remembering the Bristol Bus Boycott Campaign of 1963‘. Speakers: Silu Pascoe and Joyce Morris-Wisdom. In person event at M Shed for Black History Month. Film recording of live event coming 2024.
Previous Talks
May 18 2023: ‘Murder by witchcraft‘. Speaker: Dr Louise Ryland-Epton, Victoria County History Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.
April 20 2023: “The Antidote and Answer to Cliveden’ – Buscot Park and the Aristocrats who fought fascism‘. Speaker: Dr Alison McClean, UWE.
February 16 2023: ‘Bristol goes bananas – the city’s role in the birth of a globalised fruit trade’. Speaker: Andy Linington, Senior Policy Advisor at Nautilus International.
January 26 2023: ‘Decolonising the Catalogue: Access to Records of Bristol’s Transatlantic Slave Economy’. Speakers: Sophie Welsh, University of Exeter, and Allie Dillon, Bristol Archives.
December 15 2022: ‘Muck and Modernity: Nineteenth century sewerage engineering and the growth of modern Bristol‘. Speaker: Professor Chad Staddon, UWE Bristol.
November 17 2022: ‘The burning of Bristol’s New Gaol in 1831‘. Speaker: Steve Poole, Professor of History and Heritage at UWE, Bristol and Co-director of the University’s Regional History Centre.
October 20 2022, part of Black History Month: ‘Emperor Haile Selassie I in South-West Britain, 1936-1941‘. Speaker: Ras Benji, Rastafarian historian and project manager at Fairfield House, Bath, home of Emperor Haile Selassie I and the Ethiopian royal family, 1936-1941. A recording of this talk is now available via Imperial Voice Media, Fairfield House.
December 16 2021: ‘She is capable but sullen and troublesome’: Analysis of Muller Orphan Homes’ Dismissal Books, 1850-1900. Speaker: Kate Brooks, Associate Lecturer in Education History at Bath Spa University.
January 20 2022: Bristol’s early cinema history: From Willie Green to Archie Leach. Speaker: Dr Charlotte Crofts, Associate Professor of Filmmaking, University of the West of England.
February 17 2022: Witchcraft, magic and society in nineteenth-century Somerset. Speaker: Owen Davies, Professor of History at the University of Hertfordshire.
March 17 2022: Beyond the ballot: Girls’ education, women’s welfare and the Bristol suffragists. Speaker: Dr Alison McClean, University of the West of England.