History for Schools Workshops

Sat 9 February 2019

Cambridge Faculty of History

KS2 Workshop - Hungry Historians: a Delicious and Disgusting Food Journey Through Time

Katrina Moseley and Eleanor Barnett

What did you eat for dinner last night? Do you know what your parents ate when they were your age? What, where, and how we eat is constantly changing over time. Factors such as trade, technology, and society's values and ideas all have an impact on our taste buds and our diets. In this workshop, we will go on a delicious and disgusting journey into the past to see what a typical mealtime looked like in different historical periods; from the Tudors to the present day.

Come and learn about how cookbooks can be used to conjure up the look, smell, and taste of historical meals – you’ll even get to try some!
Key Stage 2 (ages 7-11)

KS3 Workshop - Image-breaking: Religious Violence Against Objects in Reformation Europe Professor

Alex Walsham and Dr Ceri Law

In sixteenth-century Europe, disagreements over religion were often expressed through violence directed not just against people but also things. Smashing, breaking, scratching, burning, defacing and tearing – these were all ways in which people expressed their religious beliefs under Protestant and Catholic Reformations. Many objects, including statues, artworks, and books, were mutilated or completely destroyed.

In this workshop we’ll explore what motivated people to carry out such attacks and what this can tell us as historians. Why did physical things matter so much? What did it mean to destroy something other people thought was precious? What can ruined and destroyed objects tell us about people in the past? And what do our own reactions to them reveal about how memory of the Reformations has changed in subsequent centuries? We’ll consider these questions in a range of ways – including by doing some image-breaking and defacing of our own.
Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14)

Cost: Free