In 2020, Hannah Kent won our Sid Chaplin Labour History Trophy – a miner’s lamp – for her brilliant dissertation on the Colonial Office hostels on Tyneside for African and Caribbean sailors and students, 1939-52. Because of the pandemic not only were we prevented from presenting the lamp in the usual way, at our AGM, but we were unable to award it at all last year. Hannah got to keep the trophy for two years, but now we have a winner for 2022, we arranged to collect it from her at the Discovery Museum on the evening of 10 August. This was an exciting occasion because it was the official opening of the museum’s exhibition, Stories of Service, which explores lesser known stories of the home front on Tyneside in WW2, and Hannah’s research contributed to its development! The exhibition is on until 25 September, and the article based on her dissertation (‘One Aim, One God, One Destiny’: an investigation of Black lives In Tyneside, 1939-1952) can be found in our 2021 journal.

https://discoverymuseum.org.uk/whats-on/stories-of-service-tyneside-s-home-front-during-the-second-world-war