The Nature of Military History – round-table discussion with the Seminar for War, Culture and Society

Juliette Pattinson (KCL), Professor of War Studies. Professor Pattinson joined the War Studies Department in 2024 from the School of History at the University of Kent. She is a socio-cultural historian with a particular interest in oral testimony. She has published on the history of the British women’s services, gender, and civilian experience in the two world wars. Her most recent book is Women of War: Gender, Modernity and the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (Manchester University Press, 2020).   


Speakers

• William Philpott (KCL), Professor of the History of Warfare in the War Studies Department. Professor Philpott has been a convener of the Military History seminar since 2001. He is a scholar of the First World War and British and French military history. His books include Bloody Victory: The Sacrifice on the Somme (2009) and War of Attrition (2014), He was President of the British Commission for Military History, 2019–2024.
• Richard Grayson (Oxford Brooks University), Professor of 20th Century History. Professor Grayson specializes in the history of First World War, with a focus on Ireland and the Irish Revolution. He is author of four monographs, including Dublin’s Great Wars: The First World War, the Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Belfast Boys: How Unionists and Nationalists Fought and Died Together in the First World War (Continuum, 2009). He was editor of the British Journal for Military History, 2019-24. 
• Dr Laura Tradii (University of Kent) is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of History, where she researches the long afterlives of mass death at total war in East Germany (1945 – 1990). She is a historian of modern Europe specialising on the Second World War and the Cold War. She researches the practices, debates, and ethics pertaining to the management and disposal of fallen soldiers in the First and Second World Wars.
• Dr William Fletcher (King’s College London) is an early-career lecturer in the Defence Studies Department, RMC Shrivenham. He holds BA and MA degrees from the War Studies Department, King’s College London and a PhD in Defence Studies. He is an expert on the British army and is working on his first book on the British army’s staff system in the Napoleonic wars. 

- but booking is required.

Please note that registration for this seminar will close a few days in advance. Details about how to join the seminar will be circulated via email to registered attendees 24 hours in advance.