Tuesday 5 May 2026 – John Gibbs and Mara Oliva (Reading), Lily Ford (independent scholar): Reimagining Digital History Through the Video Essay
This seminar is 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm GMT in person (IHR Peter Marshall Room, N204, Second Floor, IHR, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU) and live on Zoom (link TBC), later posted to our YouTube channel.
Session chair: TBC
Abstract: This event examines how video essays are reshaping the practice of digital history, featuring three speakers who will each present a videographic work from their own research. As historians increasingly engage with digital tools and multimedia platforms, the video essay has emerged as a powerful method for analysing, interpreting, and presenting the past. By creatively reusing archival materials and drawing on concepts such as Catherine Russell’s “archiveology” and recent approaches to digital excavation, video essays enable new forms of historical inquiry that blend critical analysis with sensory and narrative depth. The speakers will discuss the practical dimensions of videographic scholarship—editing archival footage, constructing visual arguments, and integrating sound and music—as well as the ethical considerations involved in representing history through digital media. Together, their presentations demonstrate how video essays can illuminate complex historical questions, foster critical digital literacy, and expand the methodological toolkit of digital historians seeking to communicate the past in dynamic and accessible ways.
Paper 1: Prof John Gibbs
Technology which used to cost hundreds of pounds an hour to access is now readily available on a domestic laptop. As a result, the technological means of production are available to many users: fans, cinephiles, students, academics, found footage filmmakers, all kinds of participants in the moving image aspects of remix culture. In Film and Television studies the video essay has become a key methodology, both for research and for teaching. This presentation introduces the videographic field before sharing insights gained from leading interdisciplinary videographic workshops, working with colleagues from a variety of subject areas. The main part of the presentation is the screening of a video essay which has proved of value in the context of history teaching and research.
Paper 2: Dr Lily Ford
Light Hands presents an encounter, an audiovisual moment from my research into the early history of aviation. It is an exercise in thinking with film, in using video, sounds, and time, rather than just text, to stage and externalise an investigation. Newsreel films of women working in British aircraft manufacture during the First World War are re-curated with a feminist agenda. The video essay asks questions about how these moments are experienced then and now. What is the nature of the connection that the historic moving image offers to the contemporary researcher?
Paper 3: Dr Mara Oliva
This paper uses a video-essay approach to show how audiovisual methods can reveal the shifting, fragmented, and often hidden traces of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, enriching our understanding of its historical legacy. Through a comparative analysis of key exhibits, it demonstrates how the Fair’s futuristic vision—and its influence on urban planning—can be recontextualised and critically revisited through moving-image research.
