Gale Ambassadors

Gale is committed to helping students discover research insights to advance learning and research. Gale Ambassadors are students who work within their own university to increase awareness of the Gale primary source collections available to their fellow students. Our Ambassadors study a variety of different disciplines, and all are open to receiving thoughts or questions from other students at their university about Gale Primary Sources.

A genius on the throne: Lady Jane Grey remembered

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│By André Buller, Gale Ambassador at the University of Portsmouth │

Throughout my historical studies, I remember the speed with which teachers and lecturers taught the Tudor period. Like a child faced with a wall of selections at the sweet shop, it’s practically impossible to give the entire period as much attention as one would like. Thus, more often than not the class would undergo a whistle-stop tour of the century, passing from the social unrest of Edward to the stark Catholicism of Mary’s reign with little consideration to what came in between. Lady Jane Grey has always been an interesting figure to me, and through the incredible resources of the Gale archives it is possible to inspect her further, and see how she has been remembered in the centuries that followed her brief and tragic reign.

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The Ultimate Showman: Freddie Mercury’s untold relationship with the UK press

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By James Garbett, Gale Ambassador at the University of Exeter

When Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, passed away tragically in November 1991, many newspapers mourned the passing of one of the greatest musical legends of all time. Much has already been written of the lavish and decadent parties that Mr Mercury had in his too-short lifetime, however utilising the vast wealth of archives in Gale Primary Sources, such as The Times, Archive of Sexuality & Gender and others, a new perspective can be found regarding the incredible showman and his relationship with the press.

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Nationalism Vs the true meaning of National Independence Day in Poland

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By Anna Sikora, Gale Ambassador at NUI Galway*

In 2017, thousands took part in far-right marches on National Independence Day in Poland. My Irish friend asked me how worried we should be about the rise of far-right nationalism in Poland, my home country. He had seen newspaper headlines describing millions of Polish people, including school children and families, celebrating November 11 as “unsavoury.” I was shocked and disappointed; disappointed by hooligans disrupting the Independence Day marches, and shocked by the foreign media using images of these hooligans to represent the whole nation. This year has also seen heightened tensions, with attempts to ban far-right rallies and pleas from President Andrzej Duda for marchers to “come only with red-and-white flags,” rather than the nationalist banners and flags of far-right parties seen previously.

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Between the Acts: Remembering War during the Interwar Period

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By Calvin Liu, Gale Ambassador at the University of Oxford

Remembrance is repetition.

As Laurence Binyon’s poem, often the highlight of memorial services, puts it: ‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:/ […]/ We will remember them.’ Ways of memorialising the world wars, too, seem never to grow old and are reinforced through recurrence. Remembrance is ritualised by each poppy-wearing politician, each BBC documentary, each Ian McEwan novel. The narratives have been retold so many times that they grow hazy and the details blend together – battle trenches upon Maginot Lines. It almost comes as a shock to be reminded that twenty-one years elapsed between the two world wars that we now jointly remember on one day. Twenty-one years during which the world regularly reminded itself of the last great war, before rushing into another. Gale Primary Sources provides a plethora of primary sources that poignantly illustrate how the world wars were both remembered and anticipated during the interwar period.

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Exploring Changing Attitudes Towards Climate Change in Gale Primary Sources

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By Grace Mitchell-Kilpatrick, Gale Ambassador at the University of Exeter

The issue of climate change is often one which is put on the backburner by both politicians and the population at large. Whilst the issue has been on the political agenda in several countries numerous times in the twenty-first century, the efforts to bring about impactful change remain minimal. I thought it would be interesting to use Gale Primary Sources to investigate the developing history of climate change consensus over the last thirty years or so.

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Damiselas en apuros: voces femeninas del siglo XX

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Por Paula Maher Martin, Gale Ambassador en la Universidad NUI Galway

“Lo que las mujeres son para las mujeres”, una sinfonía de pensamientos e impresiones, un lenguaje pulido delicadamente para reflejar el “cuerpo”, resonando con una “percepción” femenina de la realidad… En una crítica de A Room of One’s Own, de Virginia Woolf en el Times Literary Supplement (1929), Arthur Mc Dowall sintetiza en estos términos la experiencia femenina en la literatura, según sugiere Woolf.

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“Damsels in distress”: lost female voices of the twentieth century

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By Paula Maher Martin, Gale Ambassador at NUI Galway

“What women are to women”, a symphony of thoughts and impressions, language polished delicately to reflect the “body,” resounding with a feminine “grasp” of reality… In a 1929 Times Literary Supplement review of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Arthur Mc Dowall synthesises in these terms the female experience in literature, as intimated by Woolf.

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Soviet agricultural experiments, hibernation, the bomb, and other curious facts behind Science Fiction stories

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By Anna Sikora, Gale Ambassador at NUI Galway

The Science Fiction American-Canadian author Judith Merril (1923–1997) wrote her short story “That Only a Mother” (1948) about widespread infantile mutations after reading an article dispelling the rumours of infanticide in Japan after the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings. Later, in an interview, Merril recalls how this short newspaper piece caused her mind to race, and her initial reaction was “Oh my God. […] There are mutations by the millions and people are killing the babies” (What If? A Film about Judith Merril). Merril’s reaction is fascinating as it shows how authors transform everyday reality into literary fiction, and not necessarily just science fiction. The double lesson we immediately draw (or at least should draw!) here as students, critics, tutors and lecturers of literature is this: yes, literary stories are often inspired by real events or people; and no, literary text are not historical documents.

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Not on the Ball: England’s Top Three World Cup Blunders

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By Megan Murphy

With excitement for the World Cup 2018 building, I’ve been looking back to some of the most memorable moments from World Cups throughout the years. From England’s infamous victory in 1966, to their disastrous loss against West Germany in Italy 1990, Gale’s newspaper archives provide an invaluable tool for exploring these unforgettable (although sometimes we may wish they were) moments. I’ve featured my favourite three below…

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The Little Ratters We Know Little About: The A Brief History of the Yorkshire Terrier

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By Anna Sikora, Gale Ambassador at NUI Galway

I hate it when parents do homework for their kids, but the last one tempted me enough to get involved! To deter my 15-year-old from using the plethora of lazily compiled websites cluttered with poorly researched material, I got her onto Gale Primary Sources. Her presentation, according to her history teacher, was beyond impressive. Plus, he could not believe how easily one can now access such primary source materials, and how uniquely valuable they are. The topic was simple: to research the family pet. We have a little Yorkie, so here goes the shortened version of my child’s homework… Today, Yorkies are tiny posh dogs which celebrities like to parade in their bags, grannies hold on their laps, and small kids pet in the park (to the horror of the owners), all forgetting that a terrier is the ultimate working dog: a snappy little ratter originally bred to catch rodents.

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