What a great day for the AMSR at the MRS conference, Insights Alchemy, on Tuesday 14th March. We’ll be writing it up in more detail for the next newsletter, but these are the headlines:
We got a mention from Jane Frost in her opening address, a regular flow of visitors to our stand, seven book sales plus more online, including pre-orders for Book 3, 25 new sign-ups to our mailing list and two questions about the value of Archives put to the inspirational keynote, David Olusoga, on our behalf – watch this space for what he said.
There were so many reminders throughout the day of the importance of understanding the historical context for the challenges we face today. In the excellent opening keynote, Claer Barrett, Consumer Editor at the Financial Times, talked about the generational cognitive blindness experienced by finance people who have only ever known low interest rates.
Our own Phyllis Macfarlane talked about the value of case studies in teaching strategic thinking to young researchers, and David Olusoga talked about the historical documents that show the long roots of the false idea that Black people feel less pain – which still has an impact on how people are treated by healthcare professionals today. He said that there is no more important job for historians to do that to show how such pervasive ideas have been constructed, as this is what will help us to dismantle them.
The Archive is a treasure trove of historical documents that can help us to understand how we got where we are today. We can be very proud of our contribution not only to preserving and demonstrating the value of our industry to society but also to educating the researchers of the future and providing the essential historical context that will help challenge the status quo.
Contributed by Judith Staig
Date posted: 22nd March 2023