A group project with a difference - helping history come alive
Studying History at university isn’t all about lectures. Second year students are challenged each year to investigate a topic and prepare a presentation about it. The popular group project gives undergraduates an opportunity to undertake a piece of independent research and communicate their findings to their lecturers and the outside world.
One group worked on a ‘TV programme-style’ account of Caribbean migration in Southampton. They interviewed local people who had crossed the Atlantic to work in Britain and delved into the archives to track down original Daily Echo newspaper cuttings from 1955, which told of the daily arrival of passenger ships with hundreds of migrants on each one. The ‘show’ featured studio interviews and video links with city historian Don John and student ‘reporters’ on location at Southampton docks.
“Southampton’s role in migration has largely been overlooked because most of the migrants passed through the port to settle elsewhere. We enjoyed finding out more about what really happened in the 1950s” said students James Robinson, Becky Worringham, Dan Bentley-White, Anna Jones, Vicky Heywood and Daniel Killick who all took part in the migration project. As well as the presentation, they also produced a programme for the University’s student station Surge Radio and wrote essays about their experience.
Another project examined the effect of the plague on Hampshire. The groups’ sophisticated video covering the spread of the Black Death can be found on
You Tube.
Senior tutor Julie Gammon said she was impressed by the students’ hard work. “We had an incredibly wide range of projects that our second years could choose from. We ask them to carry out rigorous academic research but also to use their creativity and imagination to tell the stories to non-historians.”
The group project module is part of Humanities’ programme to assist students in developing transferable skills with wide applications during their time at Southampton.