The history of internationalism has tended to focus on power centres in the Global North – London, Geneva, New York, Paris – and institutions like the League of Nations, United Nations and UNESCO. What happens when we flip our perspective, and view internationalism from the point of view of the decolonising South? What do we get when we shift our focus from world leaders to the internationalism of activists, intellectuals, feminists, poets, artists, rebels and insurgents operating in Asia and Africa? Moreover, how are our methods of researching and debating international history – in universities, archives and conferences in the Global North – structured by economic inequalities, colonial legacies and visa regimes that limit participation by scholars from the South? This paper considers how we might decolonise both the content and the methods of international history, focusing especially on leftist internationalism and South–South connections in Southeast Asia and the wider Global South.

This article assesses the challenges that university-level teachers of modern British political history currently face in what is often described as a ‘post-truth’ and polarised political environment. It argues that, whilst these challenges do not always present entirely new pedagogical considerations, the sociocultural and political terrain in Britain today requires careful navigation, particularly in an academic field which addresses recent historical topics that are routinely politicised and contested in contemporary discourse. Although there is a lack of scholarly literature on the topic of teaching modern British political history in a higher education setting, this article draws upon a wide array of educational studies to map out the contours of a successful pedagogical strategy that could facilitate ‘deep’ learning in the current contextual environment. To this end, it suggests that by utilising modern British political history's interdisciplinary foundations, applying teaching techniques that help students to explore topics from multiple viewpoints, devising new and stimulating interactive tasks, and capitalising on the opportunities afforded by the Internet age, learning can be enhanced and many of the more academically problematic features and characteristics of the current political climate can be counteracted.

What was daily life like for old people in Russian villages at the turn of the twentieth century? Elderly people feature as an integral part of Russian rural family life in literary and in scholarly accounts, and are predominantly framed as able, skilled, omniscient community members. This article suggests that constructions of old age that see the elderly retaining physical prowess and community leadership overlook the lived realities of ageing. As elderly people lost physical and mental capacity, they slipped out of view in the Russian village, desexed, unseen and unremarked. The experience of the frail elderly allows us to explore the values accorded individuals within rural communities, and the extent to which families, communities and legal structures could and did intervene in the private sphere.