Teaching the Greater War - The Lausanne project podcast with Sam Foster (UEA East Centre)
Jonathan Conlin invites Samuel Foster to explain the rationale behind his new module on “Europe in the Era of the Great War” and report on how students have engaged with imagology and uncomfortable analogies with their own times.
In British schools the First World War, narrowly defined, remains a pillar of the history curriculum. Meanwhile the British Establishment continues to exploit a WWI-centred culture of memory as a screen on which to project contemporary anxieties – so much so, Sam argues, that “it is not really history”. In this conversation, recorded on 1 May 2025, Jon asks Sam to explain the thinking behind his decision to start his new WWI module in 1908, and to reflect on how his students responded to a workshop on imagology, the critical study of community stereotypes. Sam also reflects on how his own research into the Balkans has been shaped by dialogue with Ottomanists, whose WWI chronology partly inspired that followed by his UEA module.