This appendix gives a brief summary of the role of some individuals who did work connected with Army psychiatry in Second World War Britain (particularly the development of schemes of officer selection and POW rehabilitation). The data was compiled from biographies, autobiographies, obituaries, census information, letters and articles published in…[Read more]

This map illustrates the locations of Command Psychiatrists, War Office Selection Boards (WOSBs), Civil Resettlement Units (CRUs), Area Psychiatrists, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Neurosis Centres, Military Mental Hospitals, Military Mental Hospitals for Women, and Military Psychiatric Hospitals. I have made the map interactive so different…[Read more]

Review Published in The British Journal for the History of Science, Vol. 49, March 2016 http://journals.cambridge.org/article_S0007087416000182 Both The Open Mind and Shaky Foundations offer interesting insights into scholarship in Cold War North America, documenting a variety of political, institutional and social influences upon the social…[Read more]

Military historians have debated the role of the War Office Selection Board (WOSB) in creating a “People’s Army” and democratising the British military during the Second World War. The role of these boards in reconfiguring the identity of the psychiatrist and the boundaries of their expertise in mid-twentieth century Britain, however, has been lar…[Read more]

In 1939, psychiatrists wrote to the War Office of Britain to offer up their services in the likely event of war. The response? A resounding silence. This unpromising start marked the first words (and the first silence) in a discussion of psychological science that would span the war. The ” trick cyclist ” , or psychiatrist, was a controversial…[Read more]

How we, as Americans, see warfare in our late 20th century mindset.

Because the profession of chaplaincy has significant challenges in balancing ones spiritual life while providing spiritual resiliency to ones Soldiers, a chaplain must have an identity that is God centered, self-knowing and Soldier focused. In our stressful military world, we are often pushed and pulled in different ways. At times these ways can…[Read more]

The warfare in the Napoleonic era is fundamentally similar to warfare practiced today.

The origin of ambergris, an intestinal pathologic secretion of the sperm-whale, used in perfumes and medieval pharmacology, had been long debated among Arab scholars. The paper exposes the various hypotheses related to this origin, and its textual transmission during medieval times. These traditions show a good example of complex relations between…[Read more]

Alfred von Reumont published popular books on the legends of Aachen and the Rhine: Aachens Liederkranz und Sagenwelt (1829, new edition 1873: Aachener Liederchronik) and Rheinlands Sagen, Geschichten und Legenden (1837, English: Ruins of the Rhine. Their Times and Traditions). They are contextualized in the framework of German legend production…[Read more]

In 2013 the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka published a recollection of his childhood in concentration camps, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death. Historians and general audiences praised the poetic and reflective tone of the book. Deported at 11 years of age from Theresienstadt, Kulka spent a year and half at Auschwitz and is one of the very…[Read more]

Overview article on history and logistics of the Westerbork transit camp, making extensive use of the original Westerbork records in the NIOD. The paper also specifies the connection between the Jewish Council in Amsterdam and Westerbork, as well as the set-up of transports and the system of “Sperren”. The article includes a complete and revised…[Read more]

In this essay, I will discuss a conflation of knowledge and demands for political reform in mid-nineteenth-century India. At the centre of my discussion is an objection to the often-reiterated argument that emphasizes how colonial forms of knowledge underpinned the British regime in its bid to control and subjugate Indians. Rather, I would suggest…[Read more]

John Lakenheath reorganized the archives of the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds in the 1370s, a key tool in his administrative work on its estates that was still in disorder after it was sacked by the townspeople in 1327. This culminated in the ‘Lakenheath Registry’ (London, British Library, Harley MS 743), an indexed directory of the Bur…[Read more]

The aim of this paper is to explore and call into question the account of the insurrection of a number of Germanic tribes against the Huns, in the so called Battle of Nedao River (second half of the fifth century). The testimony of this battle, recorded by Jordanes, represents the end of the submission of many Germanic and nomadic groups and the…[Read more]

Over the years, jürgen Habermas and Andrew Moravcsik have both written an impressive collection of academic works and public literature, dealing with one of the most contentious issues in the socio-political field, namely the process of European integration. Despite their shared interest in subjects as the European constitution, the democratic…[Read more]