Penelope J. Corfield is a historian, lecturer and education consultant. She recently served as the President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ISECS).
This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
OKLearn moreWe may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.
Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.
Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.
We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.
We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.
These cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate form to help us understand how our website is being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customize our website and application for you in order to enhance your experience.
If you do not want that we track your visit to our site you can disable tracking in your browser here:
We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.
Google Webfont Settings:
Google Map Settings:
Google reCaptcha Settings:
Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:
The following cookies are also needed - You can choose if you want to allow them:
MONTHLY BLOG 34, COPING WITH WRITER’S BLOCK
/in Monthly Blog, Skills/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2013) You’re suffering from writer’s block? A common ailment. What to do?? The first and best answer is: don’t hit the bottle. It’s only too true that alcohol makes you think that things are going better (at least for a while) whilst concealing the fact […]
MONTHLY BLOG 33, CONTRACTING OUT SERVICES IS KILLING REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2013) ‘Contracting out’ is a policy mantra especially of financial/services capitalism (as opposed to industrial capitalism or landowner capitalism), which has been gaining greater support year by year. As an ideal, it was succinctly formulated by Nicholas Ridley (1929-93), who held various ministerial posts under […]
MONTHLY BLOG 32, REACTIONS TO MAKING A HISTORY DVD
/in Monthly Blog, Skills/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2013) Having made the hour-long History DVD Red Battersea 1809-2008 (2008), what reactions did we get? The production team quickly became aware that Battersea CLP, among all Britain’s local constituency parties of all political persuasions, has done something unique. We’ve written a collective autobiography in […]
MONTHLY BLOG 31, ON SCRIPTING AND CO-DIRECTING AN HOUR-LONG HISTORY DVD
/in Monthly Blog, Skills/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2013) At first, it seemed simple. Based on research by myself and a keen group of historically-minded comrades, I gave an illustrated public lecture in June 2006 to mark the centenary of the Labour Party, with special reference to Battersea. There was much interest and […]
MONTHLY BLOG 30, BUT PEOPLE OFTEN ASK: HISTORY IS REALLY POLITICS, ISN’T IT? SO WHY SHOULDN’T POLITICIANS HAVE THEIR SAY ABOUT WHAT’S TAUGHT IN SCHOOLS?
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2013) Two fascinating questions, to which my response to the first is: No – History is bigger than any specific branch of knowledge – it covers everything that humans have done, which includes lots besides Politics. Needless to say, such a subject lends itself to […]
MONTHLY BLOG 29, SHOULD EACH SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EDUCATION REWRITE THE UK SCHOOLS HISTORY SYLLABUS?
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2013) The answer is unequivocally No. (Obvious really but worth saying still?) History as a subject is far, far too important to become a political football. It teaches about conflict as well as compromise; but that’s not the same as being turned into a source […]
MONTHLY BLOG 28, ANSWERING QUESTIONS POST SEMINAR PAPERS/ LECTURES
/in Monthly Blog, Skills/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2013) If post-seminar questions are less memorable that the papers or lectures which precede them, then the answers tend to be even less anecdotable. I can think of only a handful, among thousands of intellectual encounters, which remain in my memory. Nevertheless, answers in an […]
MONTHLY BLOG 27, ASKING QUESTIONS POST SEMINAR PAPERS/LECTURES
/in Monthly Blog, Skills/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2013) What? what? what? Always good to ask questions. Not always easy to manage a good one. In the debates following the thousands of public lectures and seminar papers that I’ve heard, a few examples stand out. One was simplicity itself. It caught out a […]
MONTHLY BLOG 26, WORST AND BEST ACADEMIC LECTURES THAT I’VE HEARD
/in Monthly Blog, Skills/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2013) Apart from the routine lectures that form the bread-and-butter of an academic’s job, we constantly give special lectures and/or papers. These presentations are made to a miscellany of research seminars, public meetings, specialist societies, academic conferences and other outlets, at home and overseas. From […]
MONTHLY BLOG 25, CHAMPIONING THE STUDY OF HISTORY
/in Civics, Monthly Blog/by Penelope J. CorfieldIf citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2012) How do we champion (not merely defend) the study of History in schools and Universities? Against those who wrongly claim that the subject is not commercially ‘useful’. Here are three recommendations. Firstly, we should stress the obvious: that a knowledge of history and an […]