HUMANS OF UCL HISTORY
Welcome to our cozy corner in Gordon Square, also known as UCL History...
Humans of UCL History is a platform organised by the UCL History Journal so that faculty, researchers, and students can tell their personal journeys that led them to UCL History.
Jonas Jungwoo Lim
Having spent my pre-adult years in a school up in the rural mountains, I was accustomed to listening to how the surrounding forestry not only provided fresh air and cool hiking trails, but also actively shaped the history of our school. My first-ever research essay written in high school was actually on ecology rather than history, which was about how an artificial pond in my school influenced the survival of a certain frog species after rainfall. My history teachers were also big ecology-enthusiasts and bird watchers, which undoubtedly influenced me during my formative years as an intellectual.
In hindsight, I think that mindset made it rather obvious to me that humans were not really the chosen agents of history that they’re commonly portrayed to be... I felt that there was much rethinking and rewriting to do about what human agency means in terms of the climate crisis, and that was what drew me into environmental history in an academic sense.
Dr Alessandro De Arcangelis
So, to put it succinctly, if there’s one thing that my teaching really tries to do, it’s to get students to question what people think they know about history. History is not a powerful discipline because of what it teaches you about the past, but because it makes you think critically about human activity and thought... Every year, students come into my modules thinking they’re about to find something and leave it with something that they totally didn’t expect: a skill, an intuition, and, most importantly, the ability to think critically and independently. And when that happens, I know I’ve done my job as a lecturer...
Nishtha Saraf
So, you know, even as a fourteen-year-old I just realised that people didn’t see beyond the obvious, and as a historian, I could be someone who could change that. History wasn’t something disconnected from the present; for me, it’s always been an acute engagement with present biases that’s sparked my interest in history. I think that’s what gives me the largest satisfaction in doing history: changing what is accepted by people just because it’s there...
Our Story
Humans of UCL History was created in 2022 as a project for our History Journal.
We aim to bring lively stories behind the words and numbers on students’ module selections while giving faculty the chance to promote their modules and to share their passion.
If there is a person whose story you would like to hear, please email us at historysociety.ucl@gmail.com!