Peter Gatrell
Peter Gatrell
@pwgatrell.bsky.social

Historian - mainly researching refugee history in the 20c. … but it’s not just about refugees… oh, and still learning about what’s at stake then and now. Funded generously in the past by AHRC and Leverhulme Trust and enabled by UNHCR Records and Archives .. more

Political science 67%
History 17%

Credit where it’s due - to the anonymous reviewers!
A new Article has been published in JTH!

"“My only address is this ship”: Refugee seamen and the work of UNHCR, 1950s–1960s", by Peter Gatrell.

Check it out here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Don't miss it!

Reposted by Kevin O’Sullivan

A great opportunity for researchers writing up a PhD thesis or recently completed in refugee history broadly defined - a friendly and supportive working environment and this year in … Vienna!
Un appel du projet ERC @atlanticexiles.bsky.social qui organise son sixième séminaire d'histoire transnationale des réfugiés à l'Université de Vienne à l'automne 2026 : propositions attendues jusqu'au 20 décembre, jeunes chercheur.es francophones welcome !

Reposted by Peter Gatrell

A new Article has been published in JTH!

"“My only address is this ship”: Refugee seamen and the work of UNHCR, 1950s–1960s", by Peter Gatrell.

Check it out here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Don't miss it!
What an interesting coincidence.

Reposted by Peter Gatrell

With your support through The Big Give, every donation is doubled — helping even more young people access friendship, guidance, and community.

🧡 Give today and make twice the impact.
The Power of Youth Work – Big Give
We're raising funds to support young refugees, aged 14-18 yrs who are often dealing with trauma, isolation and a complex …
donate.biggive.org
Chief exec of OfS 'said the OfS believes there are 24 institutions at risk of exiting the market in the next 12 months, seven of which are large providers with more than 3,000 students. There are another 25 or so institutions of various sizes at risk over a two- to three-year period, she added.'
Seven ‘large providers’ at risk of going under in the next year
Skills minister says no higher education institutions are at imminent risk of collapse this year but OfS confirms more than 20 providers are being closely monitored
www.timeshighereducation.com
Word of the day is ‘quockerwodger’ (19th century): a puppet politician whose strings are pulled entirely by someone else.
Just realised this is referring to a church in North Carolina and not the Welsh singer
"Palestinians experience the displacement of the 2020s genocide not as a singular event, but as part of a repeated cycle."

Anne Irfan on the importance of writing Gaza's history.
Writing history in a time of genocide
Anne Irfan asks, what does it mean to write the history of a place as it is being destroyed before our very eyes?
www.historyworkshop.org.uk

Reposted by Peter Gatrell

"It was scandalous to me that [the NYT] was resurrecting this dividing line between the Indigenous and the non-Indigenous, that could only be crossed through miscegenation. The Times was so narrowly preoccupied with marginalizing one candidate that it seemed to have forgotten everything else."
Mahmood Mamdani on Zohran, Uganda and forced expulsion: ‘Who is part of the nation and who is not?’
After being expelled from his homeland in 1972, the academic has grappled with questions of political belonging – a major theme of his son’s mayoral campaign
www.theguardian.com
Good to see the problems facing our colleagues @britishlibrary.bsky.social being raised here by @hetanshah.bsky.social (of @britishacademy.bsky.social). If this had happened in France it would be considered a national problem to be urgently addressed! www.cityam.com/the-british-...
The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care?
The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity
www.cityam.com
Among the many things wrong with Labour’s immigration strategy, this stands out: to “fight” a few thousand so-called illegal migrants, Shabana Mahmood is willing to make life hell for hundreds of thousands of people who are legally in the UK.
🔗 theconversation.com/labours-plan...
Labour’s plan for migrants to ‘earn’ permanent residency turns belonging into an endless exam
In this hierarchical system, migrants are kept on extended probation and judged by standards never applied to British nationals.
theconversation.com
No, I'd say it's racists and those pandering to them.

Reposted by Peter Gatrell

Un appel du projet ERC @atlanticexiles.bsky.social qui organise son sixième séminaire d'histoire transnationale des réfugiés à l'Université de Vienne à l'automne 2026 : propositions attendues jusqu'au 20 décembre, jeunes chercheur.es francophones welcome !

Spread the word - I’m biased but this is such a great initiative with a friendly and supportive atmosphere!

Reposted by Peter Gatrell

Reposted by Peter Gatrell

📢 We are thrilled to announce the #CfP for the Sixth International Seminar in Historical #Refugee Studies, which will be held at the University of Vienna, Sept 28-Oct 1, 2026! Deadline is December 20, 2026. For more information, see rhs.hypotheses.org and CfP below:
I’ve written to Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage urging them to condemn Donald Trump’s attack on the BBC.

The BBC belongs to Britain, not Trump. We must defend it together.

Hi Cath - I missed this first time round and I’m so pleased you reposted it. I have a friend who will also want to read it but who doesn’t do social media! Among your own striking way with words I also love the quote from Alison Light. Take care. Peter
For Remembrance Sunday, a short reflection on the life and death of my great grandfather in the twenty years after his return. botheringmiancestors.substack.com/p/the-trench...
The Trenches, the Tram and the Trolley Bus
A twentieth-century story
botheringmiancestors.substack.com
For Remembrance Sunday, a short reflection on the life and death of my great grandfather in the twenty years after his return. botheringmiancestors.substack.com/p/the-trench...
The Trenches, the Tram and the Trolley Bus
A twentieth-century story
botheringmiancestors.substack.com

I can relate to this!
Trying a new mantra as I edit down another 14000 word draft article:

Every article doesn’t need to include every archival nugget you have discovered on the topic

Every article doesn’t need to include every archival nugget you have discovered on the topic

Every article doesn’t need to include…

Reposted by Peter Gatrell

Trying a new mantra as I edit down another 14000 word draft article:

Every article doesn’t need to include every archival nugget you have discovered on the topic

Every article doesn’t need to include every archival nugget you have discovered on the topic

Every article doesn’t need to include…

Reposted by Peter Gatrell

Some of my reflections on and from Lampedusa
Lampedusa's ghosts: A political choice, not a crisis of numbers
Europe's decades-old policies have transformed the Italian island's irregular migration role into an invisible haunting.
www.aretenews.com
Government has published one of those quiet but important documents that might get overlooked as it is not 'newsy'. The headline finding is that £1 of public R&D investment generates £8 in net economic benefits for the UK over the long term
www.gov.uk/government/p...
The value of public R&D
www.gov.uk
Anand Menon has a rare gift: making the hardest political questions feel answerable.

As professor at King’s & director of UK in a Changing Europe, he’s done more than almost anyone to make British-EU relations intelligible.

👉🏽 catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/etched-in-...

🧵
Etched in Marble: Anand Menon on Clear Thinking, Public Writing, and the Joy of Being Useful
Writers on the Forces That Shape Us and the Writing That Endures
catherineeunicedevries.substack.com
📣 Call for participants 📣

Have you ever used any History Workshop Journal articles in your teaching practice?

We’d love to hear from you for the 100th issue of HWJ!

Please let us know by sending an email or feel free to DM.
Call for Application: Full Professor of Modern and Contemporary History @unibayreuth.bsky.social
Brown University rejects invite to join federal compact
For reasons, it would be v. helpful to have information from a broad range of academic and non-academic (incl. GLAM) users of the BBC Written Archives OTHER THAN historians, briefly on: 1) What you've used it for and 2) How the proposed changes would impact on your research.

Reposts welcomed.
Historians dismayed by ‘scandal’ of BBC cutting access to...
Critics say new limit to trove of information sounds knell for independent research
observer.co.uk

Great stuff but how about some history? Just for starters … Becky Taylor, Louise London, Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox, etc. etc.
Books I read while writing mine. If you're interested in small boats, migration, refugees, UK immigration and asylum, I'd recommend all of these. Anything to add?