One of the perks of being a part-time academic is having to do lots of unpaid work aimed at raising one’s profile within your discipline. However, sometimes this work is more a pleasure than a chore. Such is the case with being a co-convenor on the IHR’s (Institute of Historical Research) Sport and Leisure History seminar series. Our final speaker of the academic year is Beth Gaskell who will round off our series of papers on sport and the military by looking at the coverage of sport in newspapers in the nineteenth century. Her abstract is below:-

Parade Ground and Playing Field: The Central Role of Sport in Nineteenth Century Military Periodicals

During the 1790s the first newspapers, magazine and journals aimed specifically at a military audience began to appear. Such periodicals slowly began to gain popularity, and from the 1820s onwards their number steadily increased, until by the late 19th century there were over 100 titles. From their early days sport played a central role in military periodicals, with coverage of sport appearing in almost every title produced.

This paper will investigate which sports appeared, the type of sport content that was featured, and why sport played such an important role in military publications. It will examine key concepts such as military discipline, professional training, esprit-de-corps, morale and boredom, and it will also explore the relationship between sport and empire.

Beth Gaskell is a fourth year PhD candidate at the University of Greenwich. Her research investigates military writing, military-media relations and the professionalisation of the British Army in the long nineteenth century, with a particular focus on the rise of the professional periodical press. She is also a qualified Librarian currently working as Curator, Newspaper Digitisation at the British Library, and has previously held posts at the Royal Astronomical Society, the National Army Museum and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Her chapter on ‘Bibliographic issues: titles, numbers, frequencies’, appeared in the Colby Prize winning volume, Researching the Victorian Periodical Press: Case studies, which was published by Routledge in July 2017.

#history #IHR #military

History London Sport history Institute of HIstorical Research