During the Stalin and Gottwald era (1948-1953), unprecedented intensive cooperation in the energy sector evolved between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, having a major impact on the development of the power grid of both partners. Through this blog post, I examine the extent of this mutual cooperation and consider its impact on the development of ..read more

Mainstream interest in psychedelic drugs has continued to rise in recent years, with compounds like LSD, psilocybin, and DMT receiving scientific reappraisal, and popular interest in Indigenous plant medicines like Ayahuasca growing. An increasing number of clinics in North America and Europe now offer a range of psychedelic-assisted therapies and research into these drugs is ..read more

This year marks the anniversary of an important moment in the history of climate activism. January 2023 marks 25 years since Shell decided on the re-use of the decommissioned oil buoy, the Brent Spar.[1] The fate of the Spar had been at the centre of an international dispute between Shell and Greenpeace in 1995, and ..read more

The politics of grain found new relevance at the beginning of this year when Putin’s war with Ukraine sparked fears of a ‘global food crisis’. Ukraine is a significant exporter of grain, and so the blockades imposed by Russia created widespread concern over hunger and price rises, contributing to the cost-of-living crisis in the UK ..read more

Beauty contests are frequently dismissed as sexist exploitation which encourage audiences to judge women solely upon their looks. This criticism can be traced back to Women’s Liberation protests at the 1968 Miss America and 1970 Miss World contests in Atlantic City and London, respectively. One former protester recalled that the Miss America contest ‘taught young ..read more

On this day 100 years ago, the BBC transmitted its first radio programme.[1] ‘Designed to represent the nation to the nation, the world to the nation, and the nation to the world’, the BBC had grandiose aims from its inception.[2] Funded by a license fee, the BBC was able to avoid ‘the damaging limitations of ..read more

‘Ownership and the Price of Empire’ is an exhibition running as part of the Futurecade experience at Sheffield’s Millennium Gallery for Festival of the Mind (2022). As we explain in the project’s overview, this exhibition is: ‘an exploration of the debates around the repatriation of “stolen” museum objects implicated by Britain’s imperial past.’ To probe ..read more

In 1924, the National Library for the Blind’s (NLB) secretary and librarian, Constance Bellhouse, wrote to publisher G.P. Putnam’s Sons asking for permission to produce braille copies of Marie Stopes’s Married Love (1918). Users of the NLB had heard about the book in Horizon, a braille magazine produced by a trade union for blind people ..read more

Over the Easter weekend, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby spoke out against the Government’s newly announced plan to send some people seeking asylum in the United Kingdom to Rwanda. Welby called the plan ‘against the judgment of God’; his predecessor, the distinguished theologian and scholar Prof Rowan Williams concurred. Neither the Prime Minster, nor the Home Secretary, were thrilled when ..read more

In this ‘dia-blog’ historians Alan Allport (Professor of History, Syracuse University, New York) and author of Britain at Bay: The Epic Story of the Second World War, 1938-1941 (2020) and Julie Gottlieb (Professor of Modern History, University of Sheffield), share their thoughts about the new Netflix film Munich– The Edge of War (2022).  The film uses the suspenseful days of ..read more