Not so clean eating

Professor Angela Smith has recently given a paper at the 3rd FoodKom International Conference, held in Ljubljana, Slovenia.  Angela considered the recent shift in food communication which has seen a rapid rise of the concept of 'clean eating' as an all-embracing notion of wellness. In the UK, the pioneers of clean eating have recently sought to distance themselves from this controversial area of cooking and lifestyle by rebranding themselves as purveyors of a more generic wellness agenda. Angela showed how the self-appointed clean-eating gurus who write the blogs and cookery books associated with the concept nevertheless seek to persuade us to exclude huge groups of food types and to 'get the glow'.

History undergraduate wins prize for research

Leanne Smith receives her prize (Photo: Sunderland Echo)

Leanne Smith, who graduated this summer with a First Class degree in history has won the annual Sid Chaplin Memorial Prize for the best undergraduate dissertation on North East history. Her study, entitled The Struggle Over Female Labour In The Durham Coalfield, 1914-1918, examined how the Durham Mining Association (DMA) resisted pressure from colliery owners and the government to accept the introduction of female labour during the First World War. Leanne's research made use of the holdings of the university's North East England Mining Archive and Research Centre (NEEMARC) and her work will be published in the journal of the North East Labour History Society. You can read Leanne's interview in the Sunderland Echo here.

Criminal corpses

PhD student Patrick Low has taken on the role of Online Exhibition Creator for the University of Leicester's Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse. This Wellcome Trust funded project explores the criminal corpse from the disciplines of archaeology, medical and criminal history, folklore, literature and philosophy, revealing the ways in which its power was harnessed, by whom, and to what ends in Britain between the late seventeenth and twentieth centuries. Patrick was approached by the project team after they had read his blog on execution in North East England: Last Dying Words. You can visit the website here.

                
                 William Heath (1829): Burke and Hare suffocating Mrs Docherty for sale to Dr Knox;
                 satirizing Wellington and Peel extinguishing the constitution for Catholic emancipation.