New MOOC to explore Working Lives on Britain's Railways

From Tahitia McCabe at the University of Strathclyde's genealogy team:

Just wanted to tell you about a new MOOC (massive open online course) which has been created by colleagues from the English Studies programme here at Strathclyde and the Railway Museum in York. It’s Working Lives on Britain's Railways: Railway History and Heritage and as you might suspect focuses on people working on the railways and their experiences. I think it will be of interest to genealogists! It’s free, offered through FutureLearn and starts at the end of September. Folks can sign up here https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/working-lives-on-the-railway.

And here's the formal description from the course site:

Working Lives on Britain's Railways: Railway History and Heritage

Discover Britain's industrial heritage and learn about the lives of British railway workers from 1840-1914.

Explore British railway history and learn what work on the railways was like

On this course, you will investigate the professional lives of the men and women working on the British railways from the 1840s until the First World War.

Using archival materials from the National Railway Museum, you will learn about the mental and physical hardship endured by railway workers, as well as the risks and pleasures that came with working in this new industry.

From Irish Catholic navvies to female office clerks based in industrial cities, you will discover the surprising diversity and complexity of the railway workforce.


What topics will you cover?

You will learn about four categories of railway worker:

• Engine-drivers
• Signallers
• Navvies
• Clerks

You will compare their differing experiences, investigate the physical and mental labour involved in their job and consider some of the following questions:

• What did they do on a daily basis?
• How did this change during this period?
• What were the key responsibilities and risks in their work?
• What were the key pleasures?

You will look at the ways in which railway workers represented their own work, using autobiographies and other primary historical materials.

You will also study how these professions were represented by those with no direct connection to railway labour.

(With thanks to Tahitia)

Chris

Order Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-Family-History-on-the-Internet-Paperback/p/16483. My next Scottish Research Online course starts 2 September 2019 - see https://www.pharostutors.com/details.php?coursenumber=102. Further news published daily on The GENES Blog Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Free online genealogy course from Strathclyde University

From the University of Strathclyde:

Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree.

This free online course offered by the University of Strathclyde and FutureLearn will help you develop an understanding of basic genealogy techniques and how to communicate your family history. Starts the 18th of July and runs for 6 weeks. The first course run attracted 26,000 students from around the world!

Learn more and sign up at: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/genealogy

(With thanks to Tahitia McCabe)

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including A Decade of Irish Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923, Discover Scottish Church Records (2nd edition), Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.

Free 5 week course - Irish Lives in War and Revolution

I'm very much in Decade of Commemoration mode, and so have just taken the plunge and signed up for my first MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) entitled Irish Lives in War and Revolution: Exploring Ireland's History 1912-1923.  The 5 week course is being freely offered by Trinity College Dublin from March 14th 2016 - here's the blurb:

ABOUT THE COURSE
How do people experience war and revolution? How does political change, violence, total war, affect life in its most basic ways?

Looking at Ireland through war and revolution, this course considers these and other questions about Irish life between 1912 and 1923.

The course looks beyond the familiar names and the famous faces – the traditional histories can tell us about them. Instead, it explores how the events that shaped the nature of modern Ireland - the Great War, the Easter Rising, the Irish war of independence and civil war - were experienced by the people who lived through them or in spite of them.

Through videos, assignments and discussions, through innovative approaches, this course introduces you to the history of Ireland in one of its most tumultuous periods. Considering the choices of those who fought in all sorts of ways for all sorts of causes, looking at the continuities of everyday life, this course allows us to question our broader understanding of these years.

Looking at the intricate and complex tapestry of lives lived, often in the midst of chaos, we might begin to ask different questions of these years. Do we understand war better if we consider the motivations that took a single soldier to the front, whether that front was in Flanders or Dublin? Does our sense of the entire period change when we examine general social and cultural trends or when we investigate their effect on private lives?

Join this course as we begin to consider these and other questions.

To sign up, visit https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/irish-history

It should hopefully be both fun and interesting!

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including my recently released Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. My Pinterest account is at https://www.pinterest.com/chrismpaton/.