Britain's Immigrants through Time

Overview

In this day school, during UK refugee week, our panel of experts place immigration into Britain into historical perspective. The sessions encourage a comparative and long-term perspective on the arrival and experiences of both refugees and migrants from medieval to modern times.

The day begins with an examination of the work of the ‘England’s Immigrants Project, 1330-1550’, recently completed at the University of York.

We then learn of the experience of refugees from Ireland and their reception into Britain during the Civil Wars of the 1640s.

We consider the reception of the other more prolonged waves of Protestant migration from the Low Countries in the late 16th century and the Huguenots from France in the 17th century.

We will then examine the experience of Black Britons and the fears surrounding interracial mixing in the Georgian period.

The day will conclude with an overview of recent work on South Asian migration into Britain in the 20th century, encompassing refugees from Uganda as well as economic migrants from India and Pakistan.

Please note: this event will close to enrolments at 23:59 BST on 18 June 2025.

Programme details

9.45am    
Registration at Rewley House reception (for in-person attendees)

10am
‘Citizens of nowhere?’ English towns and England’s Medieval Immigrants project, 1330-1550
Christian Liddy

11am    
Tea/coffee break

11.30am     
Distressed protestants or Irish vagrants? Charity and the organisation of relief to ‘Irish’ refugees in England, 1641–1651
Bethany Marsh

12.30pm
Lunch break

1.30pm     
Religious refugees and economic migrants: Huguenots and other incomers to early modern England
Vivienne Larminie

2.30pm    
Short break

2.45pm    
‘A venomous and dangerous ulcer’: Edward Long, Black migration, and the dangers of interracial mixing in Georgian Britain
Meleisa Ono-George

3.45pm    
Tea/coffee break

4.15pm    
The long history of South Asian migration to Britain
Yasmin Khan

5.15pm     
End of day

Fees

Description Costs
Course Fee - in-person attendance (includes tea/coffee) £120.00
Course Fee - virtual attendance £110.00
Baguette Lunch £7.30
Hot Lunch £19.25

Funding

If you are in receipt of a UK state benefit or are a full-time student in the UK you may be eligible for a reduction of 50% of tuition fees.

Concessionary fees for short courses

Tutors

Prof Christian Liddy

Speaker

Christian is Professor of Late Medieval History at the University of Durham. His first book was War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval English Towns: Bristol, York and the Crown, 1350–1400 (Woodbridge, 2005). His second book was The Bishopric of Durham in the Late Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2008). In 2015 Christian co-curated the ‘Magna Carta and Changing Face of Revolt’ exhibition at Palace Green Library, Durham. His most recent book is Contesting the City: The Politics of Citizenship in English Towns, 1250–1530 (Oxford University Press, 2017). He was an advisor to the ‘England’s Immigrants 1330–1550’ project at the University of York. Christian’s current interests lie in the relationship between ideas of citizenship and practices of resistance. 

Dr Bethany Marsh

Speaker

Bethany is Assistant Head of Sixth Form at Abbot Beyne School in Staffordshire where she teaches Mathematics. Bethany completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham in 2018 where she specialised in researching refugees of the British and Irish Civil Wars. While still a postgraduate, her essay ‘Lodging the Irish: an examination of parochial charity dispensed in Nottinghamshire to refugees from Ireland, 1641–1651’ won the Midland History Prize and was published in the academic journal Midland History in 2017. Bethany also undertook a doctoral placement at the National Civil War Centre, Newark-upon-Trent, where she worked on the ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ and ‘Fake News’ exhibitions. In 2019 Bethany was awarded the Roy Foster Irish Government Senior Scholarship at Hertford College, Oxford.  

Dr Vivienne Larminie

Speaker

Vivienne is the honorary general editor of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland and also edited Huguenot Networks: The Interactions and Impact of a Protestant Minority in Europe, 1560–1680 (2017). Before her retirement Vivienne was assistant editor of the project now published as The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1640–1660 (2023) and previously an in-house research editor at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, where immigrants were one of her specialist areas. She has published widely on subjects including Oxfordshire and Warwickshire gentry, religion in England, and Anglo-Swiss relations. 

Dr Meleisa Ono-George

Speaker

Meleisa is Associate Professor and Brittenden Fellow in Black British History at Queen’s College, Oxford. Meleisa is a social-cultural historian of race and gender, with a focus on Black women’s histories in Britain and the Anglo-Caribbean. She is interested in the everyday ways people oppressed within society negotiate and navigate structures of power and inequality, as well as the legacies and politics of writing such histories within contemporary society. Her current research focuses on the life of an Afro-Jamaican woman in late eighteenth-century Jamaica and Britain and the archival remnants of her life. Meleisa is also currently developing a community-engaged project which looks at the history of Black mothering in Britain and the use of creative storytelling. Both of these projects draw upon her strong interest in community-engaged and Caribbean research methodologies.

Dr Yasmin Khan

Speaker

Yasmin is Associate Professor in History at the University of Oxford. Her publications include The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (Yale University Press/Penguin India, 2007) which won the Gladstone Prize from the Royal Historical Society, and also The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War (Bodley Head, 2015). Yasmin has also published in journals including History Workshop Journal, Modern Asian Studies and the Roundtable: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs. In 2018 she was the presenter of the BBC2 TV series A Passage to Britain and in 2022 the co-presenter of BBC2’s Back in Time for Birmingham

Prof Andrew Hopper

Course Director

Andrew Hopper has been Professor of Local and Social History in the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford since 2021. Previously Andrew taught History at the Universities of East Anglia, Birmingham and Leicester. He is the author of Black Tom: Sir Thomas Fairfax and the English Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), and Turncoats and Renegadoes: Changing Sides during the English Civil Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). He is the Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Civil War Petitions Project and is currently working on his third monograph Widowhood and Bereavement during and after the English Civil Wars for Oxford University Press. Andrew is patron of the Naseby Battlefield Project and chairman of the editorial board of Midland History. He was appointed a Fellow of the Society for Army Historical Research in 2024.

Application

Please use the 'Book' button on this page. Alternatively, please contact us to obtain an application form.

Accommodation

Accommodation is not included in the price, but if you wish to stay with us the night before the course, then please contact our Residential Centre.

Accommodation in Rewley House - all bedrooms are modern, comfortably furnished and each room has tea and coffee making facilities, Freeview television, and Free WiFi and private bath or shower rooms. Please contact our Residential Centre on +44 (0) 1865 270362 or email res-ctr@conted.ox.ac.uk for details of availability and discounted prices. For more information, please see our website: https://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/about/accommodation

IT requirements

For those joining us online

We will be using Zoom for the livestreaming of this event. If you’re attending online, you’ll be able to see and hear the speakers, and to submit questions via the Zoom interface. Joining instructions will be sent out prior to the start date. We recommend that you join the session at least 10-15 minutes prior to the start time – just as you might arrive a bit early at our lecture theatre for an in-person event.

Please note that this course will not be recorded.