Captain Cook returns to Middlesbrough

Captain Cook will come under the spotlight in a three-day international conference at the University of Teesside. Entitled ‘Captain Cook: Explorations and Re-assessments’, the conference will be held from the evening of Wednesday 11-Saturday 14 September.

The conference is being organised as part of the activities of the AHRB (Arts & Humanities Research Board) Centre for North-East England History, in which the University of Teesside is a partner.

Dr Sophie Forgan, Principal Lecturer in History at the University and conference convenor said: “The conference brings together new work on Captain Cook and examines his local region, the social and cultural background of his early years, together with fluctuations in his reputation and the varying ways he has been depicted in different countries. It will link Cook’s early years to the very different worlds of the Admiralty, metropolitan London and his experiences overseas. We will also be looking at Cook’s legacy in the Pacific from the perspective of those he encountered for the first time. His life and its achievements still present many unanswered questions.

“We are interested, too, in the way that history may be explored re-creatively, as in the current BBC Two series ‘The Ship’, in which a modern-day crew repeated Cook’s journey to the east coast of Australia in a replica of the Endeavour. One of the speakers, Professor Andrew Lambert, was part of the team making the series and will no doubt have some tales to tell! We have some very distinguished speakers coming from Hawaii, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, as well as the UK. The conference is both open to academics and anybody with an interest in the life of Cook.”

The total cost for the conference is £85, with daily rates of £22-25. For more details call Dr Sophie Forgan 01642 342364, or e-mail NEEHI.history@durham.ac.uk

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