The Nervous State
Professor Julie Gottlieb is leading a collaborative project bringing together history teachers, academic historians and artists to explore the history of appeasement ‘from below’ and introduce new sources, resources and methods into the History curriculum.
The Nervous State Film
‘The Nervous State’ film is a dramatisation of F.L. Lucas's Journal Under the Terror, 1938 (1939), the result of a collaboration between Professor Julie V. Gottlieb and writer/director Nicola Baldwin, portraying ‘history from within’ during the psychological crisis created by the threat of impending war under Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler.’
The Nervous State: Embedding Emotional Literacy in Education and Historical Literacy in Clinical Practice
We all experience a sense of ‘permacrisis’, as depicted in Journal Under the Terror and dramatised in the short film The Nervous State. On July 5, 2025, Professor Julie Gottlieb led a diverse team of educators, scholars, artists, and mental health professionals at the Garrick Theatre to develop creative strategies for embedding emotional and historical literacy into curricula and therapeutic practices, addressing the urgent rise in youth mental illness. This podcast explores The Nervous State and the main themes and solutions from the Ideas Lab.
Schools History Project Collaboration and Padlet
Sarah Davies, Head of History at King Edward VII School in Sheffield, inspired by her use of The Nervous State within her classroom, produced an SHP Curriculum Padlet to embed emotional literacy through history teaching via The Nervous State. It is based on her experience and expertise in using and creating Nervous State Resources and offers updated pedagogic principles that can be applied to other periods. While reflecting on the broader implications of teaching emotional literacy in history classrooms, she showcases her developments, which include the Ideas Lab event in Stockport.
The Nervous State – Inspiration for the classroom at Doncaster XP School
Andy Sprakes, co-founder of Doncaster XP School, is one of the speakers featured in our podcast. XP takes an innovative approach to the curriculum, connecting subjects together in a cross-disciplinary approach, integrating opportunities for students to engage with ideas such as student empowerment and civic engagement. It also showcases how students have utilised their learning across subjects through the production of a final ‘product’. Inspired by the Nervous State, this booklet exemplifies how the project can be creatively used to help embed emotional literacy teaching more broadly.
Reflective journals by Y9 students
Documentaries
The Nervous State project has produced a series of three mini documentaries that explore its history and development, from the initial inspiration and collaboration between Professor Julie Gottlieb and Nicola Baldwin discussing the significance and relevance of art and historical material, to the creation of a knowledge exchange initiative that brings The Nervous State into classrooms, and finally, the collaborative process with the Historical Association, history teachers, and the heritage sector.
Press coverage
- Anxiety on eve of Second World War caused spike in ‘crisis suicides’ - The Times
- Munich – The Edge of War: women in historical films are too often unrealistic - The Conversation
- Julie Gottlieb, 'Munich Crisis 1938: Appeasement of Hitler was linked to suicides in Britain, says academic', - The Yorkshire Post