Event Start Date: 21 March 2026

We are pleased to invite all History alumni back to College to find out more about Somerville’s current research and to celebrate the endowment of the Liz Cooke Fellowship in the subject.

 

The following programme gives the structure of the afternoon and evening.  

From 1.30 Arrival in Brittain-Williams Room with coffee/biscuits

2pm Research Session 1 in Flora Anderson Hall

3.30 Tea 

4pm Research Session 2 

5.30-6.15pm break

6.15 Drinks in the Brittain Williams Room to celebrate the funding of the Liz Cooke Fellowship in History

7.30 dinner in Hall, followed by second dessert in the Mary Somerville Room

 

Speakers show the breadth of the historical community at Somerville.  Topics for the Research Sessions will include:

Helen Flatley (Lecturer): Community and Social Bonds in Medieval Toledo: Christians, Muslims and Jews at the Iberian Frontier

Jo Innes (Fellow Emeritus): How ‘Democracy’ became Modern, and will it stay that way?

Natalia Nowakowska (Tutor): Thinking with Tartars: Global History and Renaissance Eastern Europe

Lucy Pollock (Undergraduate): Same-Sex Attraction in Oxford’s Women’s Colleges, 1960-2000

Harry Stewart-Dilley (Undergraduate): The Great Squirrel Massacre(s):  Children, Pest Control and the Making of Civic Subjects [in California, Saskatchewan and Soviet Ukraine,] c.1916-1960.

Benjamin Thompson (Tutor): Tensions and Contradictions in the Late-Medieval English Church

Selina Whiteman-Gardner (DPhil student): Pirates in the Late-Medieval Irish Sea

Faridah Zaman (Tutor):  Britons, Indians, and Travel in the Fin-de-Siècle World

 

B&B is available and bookable using the code HISTORYMARCH26, with brunch included and served in Hall on Sunday from 10am – 12pm. 

Could all alumni who would like to combine attendance at this event with joining Barbara Harvey’s Memorial Service at 2.30pm on 22 March please click here to register for your place in Chapel on the Sunday?  We need to know the numbers planning to attend, as far as possible, for catering after the memorial.

If you would like to come to this event but need help with the booking costs, we invite you to apply to the Senior Members Fund for financial assistance (applications to Jackie Watson: jacqueline.watson@some.ox.ac.uk ).

Booking is now closed – For any further queries, please contact alumnievents@some.ox.ac.uk

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