Keeping and Making Diaries: Historical Sources and Perspectives, March-April 2022

Day 1, Session 1: ‘The making of an archive’

Talks from: Polly North (The Great Diary Project), on ‘Practices and politics of archival collecting: how does a diary become an archive and what is a “diary”?’; and Victoria Oxberry (Durham County Record Office), on ‘What can I tell you? The value of diaries in archives’. Watch the video

Day 1, Session 2: ‘Series of diaries’

Talks from: Amanda Jones (Churchill Archives Centre), on ‘Diary writing, war and witness: how two women writers used their diaries to explore war and memory’; Colin G. Pooley and Marilyn E. Pooley (Lancaster University), on ‘Diaries as records of everyday mobility: examples from unpublished personal diaries in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain’; and Rebecca Rogers (Université de Paris Cité), ‘The Bachellery family diaries (1835-1851): pedagogy, politics and practices’. Watch the video

Day 1, Session 3: Keynote

Denis Peschanski (European Center for Sociology and Political Sciences, Paris-Sorbonne, EHESS and CNRS), speaking on ‘The paths of memory and history’. Watch the video

Day 1, Session 4: ‘Professional Lives’

Talks from: Sharon Ruston (Lancaster University), on ‘Examining one of Humphry Davy’s 1800 notebooks, RI MS HD 13D’; Judith Rainhorn (Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne/Maison Française d’Oxford), on 'Alice Hamilton’s diaries, helpful items for staging herself’; Frank A. J. L. James (University College London), on ‘When do notebooks become a diary? The example of Michael Faraday’; and David Brown (University of Southampton), on ‘Making sense and use of Lord Shaftesbury’s diary’. Watch the video

Day 2, Session 6: ‘Empire and women’

Talks from: Aparna Bandyopadhyay (Diamond Harbour Women’s University, West Bengal), on ‘Diaries as a source of intimate history in colonial Bengal’; Angelina Giret (Université Le Havre Normandie), on ‘The journals of Honoria Lawrence (1837-1854): between domesticity and travelling, the adventures of a British woman in India’; and Kathryn Carter (Wilfrid Laurier University), on ‘Reconsidering a genealogy of diary writing in Canada’. Watch the video

Day 2, Session 7: ‘20th century women and men’

Talks from: Kate Bredeson (Reed College), on ‘Judith Malina’s lifetime diaries as historical chronicle, company history, and personal poems’; Sophie Bridges (Churchill Archives Centre), on ‘“To explore the past as I live my present”: the diary of Phyllis Willmott’; Jérôme Ordoño (Université Le Havre Normandie), on ‘Diaries and male homosexuality: a confidential matter?'; and Charlotte Tomlinson (University of Lincoln), on ‘A space to negotiate: citizenship, diary writing and femininity in Second World War Britain’. Watch the video

Day 2, Session 8: 'Diaries and historical perspectives'

Talks from: Cherish Watton (Churchill Archives Centre), on ‘“Keep the cutting for the scrap-book”: Adeline and Maurice Hankey’s scrapbook diary collection’; and Kirsten Mulrennan and Rachel Murphy (University of Limerick), on ‘Opening a window to the past: creating an online research guide to using diaries for historical research’. Watch the video

Day 2, Session 9: Provisional conclusions (before day 3)

Watch the video

Day 3, Part 1: 'Historical sources and perspectives'

Talks from: Victoria Stevens (ACR Library & Archive Conservation & Preservation Ltd), on 'Chalet Tales: changing times revealed by the conservation of the Alpine study diaries of three Oxford colleges'; Claire Mayoh (National Science and Media Museum), on ‘Cinema diaries as historical resources’; Lilith (Lea) Cooper (University of Kent), on ‘Daily squares: Covid comic diaries on Instagram’; and Dr. Simon Sleight (King’s College London), on ‘A “new brand of girl”: May Stewart’s teenage diary and landscapes of intimacy in 1900s Melbourne’. Watch the video

Day 3, Part 2: Keynote

Professor Claire Langhamer (Institute of Historical Research), speaking on ‘Feelings at work in Mass Observation’s Diaries’. Watch the video