RHS News

On 27 January, the Royal Historical Society was honoured to co-host and take part in a memorial event for the historian of India and empire, Professor Peter Marshall (1933-2025). This was an opportunity for former students, colleagues and friends to remember and celebrate what one speaker described as Peter’s ‘kindness as a person and dignity as a scholar.’

The memorial was held at King’s College London (KCL), where Peter taught between 1957 and 1993, and where, from 1980, he was Rhodes Professor of Imperial History. Though officially retired from the early 1990s, Peter remained closely involved with King’s, teaching courses into the 2010s.

Between 1996 and 2000 Peter was President of the Royal Historical Society, having previous served as a member of the Society’s governing Council between 1983 to 1987, thereafter becoming Vice President until November 1991.

As President, Peter was active in modernisation of the RHS, bringing it into closer contact with history beyond higher education, developing the Society’s policy and advocacy roles, and establishing partnerships with archives, publishers and others who make historical research possible. An account of Peter’s Presidency of the RHS, published in September 2025, is available here.

The KCL memorial event included contributions on Peter’s work on the history of early modern India, the British empire, North America, the Caribbean, and Atlantic in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Peter’s membership of the history working group for the UK national curriculum in the late 1980s and early 1990s was also discussed, as was his considerable support of the Institute of Historical Research, including his creation and funding of the ‘Marshall Fellowships’ (2005-25) managed jointly with the Society. Peter’s many and lasting contributions to the Royal Historical Society were described by the current President, Professor Lucy Noakes.

The KCL event concluded with publication of Peter’s final book, Slave Owner and Paternalist. Sir William Young (1749-1815) in England and the Caribbean (Boydell & Brewer), on which he had been working in the months before his death.

 

On Wednesday 18 February, the Society visits historians at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield. This visit will include a public lecture by our guest speaker, Professor David Stack (University of Reading) who will speak on ‘History and Well-Being: a Historian’s Perspective’.

Booking for in-person attendance at this lecture — which takes place at 5.30pm on Wednesday 18 February at Sheffield Hallam University — is now available. The lecture will be followed by a reception and chance to meet with members of the Royal Historical Society’s Council who are attending the visit to historians in Sheffield.

All are very welcome to attend the lecture and reception, and we especially hope to meet with Fellows and Members of the Society living in the city and surrounding region.

David’s lecture considers how historians might engage with contemporary discussions of well-being. What does history have to tell us about the term and its use? Does the study of history contribute to or detract from well-being?

This lecture argues that history can and should make a unique contribution, both to the concept and the practice of well-being. The study of history can deepen our understanding of the structural forces that shape well-being, and, by self-consciously integrating a well-being agenda into our research and teaching, we can simultaneously enhance the well-being of ourselves and our students and demonstrate the relevance of history to one of the most important public policy debates of our time.

David is the author of ‘Promoting Well-being through History Teaching’ which was published in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society in 2024.

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The visit to historians at Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield is the first in the Society’s 2026 programme of meetings with historians and history professionals working across the UK. Later visits this year will include to historians at Aberystwyth University (May), the University of Strathclyde (October), and the University of the West of England / University of Bristol (December).

Recent visits (2025) include those to historians working at or associated with the University of Exeter (Cornwall Campus), University of Aberdeen, University of Suffolk and Suffolk Archives, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine / UCL Institute of Education.

 

Header image: Sunset Sky, John Frederick Kensett American,1872, Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection, New York, public domain.

 

On Tuesday 10 February, the Society hosts its annual Global History Lecture, in partnership with the German Historical Institute, London. This year we are delighted to welcome Professor Vinita Damodaran (University of Sussex) who will speak on ‘Decolonising the Natural History Collections of Empire’.

This year’s lecture takes place at 5.30pm, Tuesday 10 February, at Mary Ward House, 5-7 Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SN. Booking for in-person and online attendance is now available. The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception for attendees at Mary Ward House. All are very welcome to attend.

Vinita’s lecture, with a focus on India, explores an important archive of knowledge of the natural world, collected and organised in the context of the empire, in the light of recent historiography on botany and empire. It highlights the importance of creating an inventory and digitally repatriating botanical specimens held primarily in British institutions, and highlights efforts for cultural remediation.

The lecture will examine neglected literature and networks in the imperial scientific network, which were crucial to what was a prodigious scientific renaissance in natural history and environmental understanding in the imperial context from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.

The 2026 lecture is the third in the RHS / GHIL partnership which began in 2024, with previous lectures by Roland Wenzlhuemer (LMU Munich) and Clare Armstrong (University of Leicester).

 

 

Last month, Research England pressed ‘pause’ on REF2029. The run up to this had seen announcements on core elements of the current Research Excellence Framework: recruitment of Subject Panel chairs, deputies and members; piloting of the new People, Community and Environment (PCE) component; and statements on the terms and scope of ‘Cultures of Knowledge and Understanding’, which constitutes the new-look ‘outputs’ element of REF2029.

These are REF-wide initiatives, but also ones of considerable importance for history and those historians who will participate in the coming assessment exercise. History was one of the chosen subjects for the PCE pilot and colleagues who participated, including from among the Society’s Council, have provided guidance on its utility as a measure of how historians, and scholars in the humanities more widely, undertake research. Current debates over the potential portability and weighting of outputs are likewise of particular concern to historians for whom proper appreciation of their long-form, long process work is vital.

It is equally important to view REF’s current pause from this disciplinary perspective. Officially, the halt—called in September by the UK’s Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, Patrick Vallance—will enable REF leaders to ‘take stock, ensure alignment with government priorities and vision for higher education, and reflect on feedback from the sector.’ We’ve also been told that Research England ‘will announce any changes to the exercise by December 2025.’

What we don’t know is what’s happening behind the scenes, both in terms of the scale and content of this review. What is certain is that many are using this pause to lobby—publicly and privately—for their preferred outcome. What’s also likely is that those with the strongest voices, or the most direct access, are making their pitch for selected institutions and a particular vision of the purpose and outcomes of higher education.

This leaves little space for disciplinary perspectives, and even less opportunity for disciplines—predominantly in the humanities—already marginalised by misleading public rhetorics on value and beaten down by cuts in a financial crisis that is hitting our subjects with particular force. As a learned society the Royal Historical Society speaks for its discipline and those who practice history regardless of how and where they do so.

What, therefore, do we wish to see when REF’s current pause is lifted?

It’s clear that PCE is a major part of the current review. The recent pilot showed that some revision is needed: to ensure that assessments are based on data and pay full heed to narratives written at the disciplinary and department level. At the same time, these revisions should not undermine the premise which underpin the new PCE element. We urge decision makers to appreciate the very considerable advances that REF has fostered as a result of the greater importance it has placed on research culture in recent years.

REF has helped to shape some tangible improvements in historians’ experience of research in UK higher education, not least closer attention to professional development, and support for greater diversity in staffing and research practice. To risk and diminish these improvements by reducing the PCE element of REF2029 would be a major failing—one that would have a significant, negative impact on how historians, as skilled researchers, are able to undertake their work.

We also ask those assessing REF’s future to retain their current commitment to impact and public engagement—the third component in 2029’s big picture. Here too REF has encouraged significant advances in demonstrating the public value of universities, not least within their regions. Impact is an area in which historians excel, and is further testimony to the rewards of developing positive and collaborative research cultures. Within institutions, it has a dimension that’s given rise to closer—and more creative—working within and between departments and disciplines. Plans for REF2029 note the importance of this broader perspective which will take the form of an additional unit-level impact narrative alongside subject case studies. This rightly asserts the importance of impact while removing those burdens, especially acute in smaller departments, that might otherwise fall on individual, and identifiable, scholars. It is a change the Society and many historians welcome and one to which we expect REF to hold.

Impact forms a vital link between academic historians and the many who enjoy and pursue history outside formal education. This public interest is an asset on which we must build. Impact work is a positive good: for individuals, institutions, regional communities and economies, and civic culture. At a time when many glibly question the value of history and the humanities as a university subject, support for, and measures of, impact and public engagement must remain a core element of a REF exercise that considers scholarship in the round. To lose sight of this would be a serious mistake with far-reaching consequences for UK higher education, now more than ever.

History and the wider humanities currently battle numerous challenges. To do so effectively we need structures that best support research and allow us to work well and demonstrate the value of history. This is essential if—when REF restarts—we’re to pursue a healthy culture and future for our profession.

 

Professor Lucy Noakes, President, Royal Historical Society

Professor Barbara Bombi, Secretary for Research, RHS

Dr Philip Carter, Director, RHS

 

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the election of three new members to its governing Council. These appointments follow this year’s election round for new Councillors, in autumn 2025.

The newly elected Councillors will take up their roles following the next meeting of the Society’s governing Council on 21 November and will hold their posts for four years.

Stella, Dave and Catriona will replace three serving Councillors who next month step down at the end of their terms: Professor Cait Beaumont (London South Bank University), Dr Melissa Calaresu (University of Cambridge) and Professor Rebekah Lee (University of Oxford).

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Dr Stella Fletcher 

Dr Stella Fletcher studied at the University of Warwick (BA 1986, PhD 1992), where she is an honorary fellow of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance. She taught at the University of Manchester until 2012, from which point she became a full-time carer.

She has served on the Council of the Society for Renaissance Studies and as honorary secretary of the Ecclesiastical History Society, and currently undertakes editorial work for the Historic Religious Buildings Alliance.

Her publications include A Very Agreeable Society: The Ecclesiastical History Society, 1961-2011 (2011), Roscoe and Italy (2012) and The Popes and Britain (2017). More recent projects have included compiling material for heritage boards, but what Stella most enjoys is hamming it up on radio, television or for live audiences.

 

While it is right and proper that the Royal Historical Society campaigns against the loss of academic posts, the reality is that historians are being made redundant or choosing to retire from university employment. They are still historians. Without the structures of a university environment, they have all the more need of a sense of belonging to the wider community of historians and must not feel excluded from the RHS.

When I gave up university teaching to become a carer, I carried on writing, but had to change the sort of history I wrote, tailoring it to the resources I could access locally or online. As the years passed, this became increasingly challenging: commissions dried up.

Now that I can return to active involvement in the world of history, I would like to champion those historians who find themselves outside a university environment and encourage them to contact me with their thoughts about how they would like the RHS to serve them.

 

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Dr Dave Hitchcock

 

Dr Dave Hitchcock is a historian of early modern social and cultural history. He teaches at Canterbury Christ Church University where he is Reader in Early Modern British History.

Dave mainly works on histories of early modern poverty and vagrancy. He sits on the committee of the Social History Society and is a trustee of the Economic History Society (and liaises between the two).

 

As a Councillor of the Royal Historical Society, I particularly want to contribute to the Society’s advocacy on behalf of the wider historical profession, its departmental programme of visits, and to its defence of the value of history and of history teaching and research.

In particular I want to contribute to work addressing UK policymakers on the pressing issues facing history, the wider humanities, and universities today.

 

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Professor Catriona Pennell

Catriona Pennell is Professor of Modern History and Memory Studies at the University of Exeter on its beautiful Cornwall campus in Penryn. She recently began a three-year term as Faculty APVC, Research and Impact (HASS) where she is working to promote a positive, kind, and humane research culture amid institutional and sector pressures.

Catriona specialises in the history of 19th and 20th century Britain and Ireland with a particular focus on the relationship between war, empire, experience, and memory. She has published on various aspects of the experience of the First World War and understandings of cultural historical approaches to the study of modern conflict more generally.

Catriona’s current research explores the relationship between youth, education, and the transmission of cultural memory and its role in processes of social justice, conflict resolution, and geopolitical advocacy. She has served on several academic and non-academic boards and committees, including charity trustee boards and her local parish council, most recently joining the editorial board of Brill’s History of Warfare series in September 2025.

I am delighted to be joining RHS Council and would like to thank everyone who enabled this to happen. Having seen, firsthand, the empowering effect of a RHS visit to my home department, I want to ‘pay it forward’ and work to lobby and advocate for history (in single and multi-disciplinary) departments around the UK during this unprecedented time of uncertainty and hardship in the HE sector.

 

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In her party conference speech this week, the Education Secretary, Bridget Phillipson, announced the return of maintenance grants for students in greatest need. While the Society welcomes recognition of the financial pressures and impediments many student face, it’s clear that this is a policy with nothing for the arts and humanities, including history.

In a new article for the RHS blog — ‘The value and provision of history and the humanities: it’s time for a political response’ — the Society’s President Lucy Noakes, offers a response. As is clear to many of us, questions of access and opportunity are equally pressing for students in the arts and humanities and are, indeed, becoming more so. As a new British Academy report on ‘Cold Spots’ shows, choice—in subjects including history—is being further eroded for many as the provision of higher education contorts to the financial crisis facing UK higher education.

As Lucy argues in her article, if the government is serious about choice, social mobility and access to education it needs to appreciate that provision of many degree subjects is now at considerable risk in a growing number of regions across the UK.

For students to have greater choice and access we need the environments in which choices are made to be fair, balanced and accurate. For this we require political leadership to help us address structural failings and false narratives.

 

We are deeply saddened to learn of the death, on Saturday, of Professor Peter Marshall, former Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King’s College London and President of the Royal Historical Society between 1996 and 2000.

Peter’s association with the Society spanned more than 50 years. Elected a Fellow in 1969, he served as a member of the Society’s Council between 1983 to 1987, thereafter becoming Vice President until November 1991. He returned to the Council in November 1996 as President and held this position for four years.

As President, Peter delivered four lectures on the theme of ‘Britain and the World in the Eighteenth Century’ which were subsequently published in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1998-2001) and are now available free to read until 31 October 2025.

Peter’s academic career was spent at King’s College London where he was appointed an Assistant Lecturer in 1959, rising to Professor in 1978 and becoming Rhodes Professor of Imperial History in 1980. Peter’s term as RHS President came after his retirement from King’s in 1993. Though officially retired, Peter remained closely involved with King’s, teaching courses into the 2010s.

Peter’s association with the Society also continued after his Presidency, not least with his very generous provision of the annual RHS Marshall Fellowships to support early career researchers to complete a doctorate in history. The latest recipients — for the academic year 2024-25 — have recently completed their Fellowships, held at the Institute of Historical Research. Peter took great interest in the work of each Fellow and many academic careers have been enhanced, and many professional friendships established, thanks to Peter’s creation of this programme.

Peter’s research field was British imperial history, with a specialism in eighteenth-century British India. His work appears in more than 50 articles and chapters and numerous books which range from The Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1965) to Edmund Burke and the British Empire in the West Indies (2019). His final monograph will appear posthumously.

Peter’s many other contributions to scholarship include his editorship of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (1975-81); membership of the editorial committee for the Correspondence of Edmund Burke (1965–78), for which he co-edited volume 2 (1968); as an associate editor for the Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke (1976–2015), for which he edited four volumes; and editorship of the eighteenth-century volume of the Oxford History of the British Empire (1998).

Peter was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998 and appointed a CBE for services to history in 2002.

Peter was a friend to many and a very generous host to members of the Society’s Council who enjoyed summer lunches in his garden. He will be very greatly missed.

2 September 2025: we are very grateful to Professor Peter Mandler for the following reflections on Peter’s contribution to the Royal Historical Society, both during and after his term as President. The tribute appears, from 2 September, on the RHS blog.

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IMAGE: Peter Marshall with Jinty Nelson (1942-2024) who succeeded Peter as President of the Royal Historical Society in November 2000.

 

A new article, published in the Society’s journal, Transactions, celebrates the scholarship of ‘Jinty Nelson in Thirteen Articles’.

The collection, edited by Alice Rio (King’s College London), gathers thirteen contributions by historians, friends, colleagues and/or students of Jinty’s, who were asked to choose their favourite article by her for an event held in Jinty’s memory on 15 January 2025 at King’s College London.

The chosen articles, arranged in chronological order, range from her 1977 study ‘On the Limits of the Carolingian Renaissance’, published in Studies in Church History, to ‘Charlemagne and Ravenna’, in Ravenna: Its role in Earlier Medieval Change and Exchange, a chapter in a 2016 collection edited by Jinty and Judith Herrin.

Contributors to this article include: Alice Rio, Stuart Airlie, Kate Cooper, Wendy Davies, Paul Fouracre, David Ganz, John Gillingham, Peter Heather, Judith Herrin, Henrietta Leyser, Julia M. H. Smith, Rachel Stone, and Ian N. Wood.

As Alice Rio writes in her introduction:

We offer this collection in print now for a wider audience not so much because it has any claim to be exhaustive or authoritative, but because taken all together these pieces seemed to add up to a useful retrospective on Jinty’s work, its wider context, and its impact on the field over the decades. We hope that, for those who know her work well already, this may be an opportunity to remember some of her classic (and a few less classic) articles, while at the same time serving as an accessible introduction to her research for anyone who knew her without necessarily knowing about her field, as well as for a new and younger generation of readers.

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Dame Jinty Nelson FBA (1942-2024) was Professor of Medieval History at King’s College London and President of the Royal Historical Society (2000-2004).

You can read more about Jinty’s contribution to scholarship, and to the Society, in this article, written by her friend, colleague and fellow RHS Council member, Pauline Stafford, published in October 2024.

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‘Jinty Nelson in Thirteen Articles’ is now available as an Open Access article in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. From August 2024, all content published in Transactions is available Open Access with no charge to the author.

The journal’s editors welcome submission of research articles covering all historical topics, chronologies and regions, and commentaries on aspects of historical debate and practice.

 

At its latest meeting on 2 July 2025, the RHS Council elected 78 Fellows, 49 Associate Fellows, 45 Members and 62 Postgraduate Members, a total of 234 people newly associated with the Society, from today.

The majority of the new Fellows hold academic appointments at universities, specialising in a wide range of fields; but also include curators, librarians, heritage specialists, independent researchers and writers. The Society is an international community of historians and our latest intake includes Fellows from eleven countries: Australia, Canada, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The new Associate Fellows include not only early career historians in higher education but also historians with professional and private research interests drawn from heritage, learned societies, libraries and archives, teaching, and public and community history.

The new Members have a similarly wide range of historical interests, and include individuals working in universities, culture and heritage, education, the civil service and broadcasting – together with independent and community historians and genealogists.

Our new Postgraduate Members are studying for higher degrees in history, or related subjects, at 44 different universities in the UK, Canada, France, India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States.

All those newly elected to the Fellowship and Membership bring a valuable range of expertise and experience to the Society.

New Fellows and Members are elected at regular intervals through the year. The current application round is open and runs to 11 August and 13 October 2025. Further details on RHS Fellowship and Membership categories (Fellow, Associate Fellow, Member and Postgraduate Member); benefits of membership; deadlines for applications; and how to apply, are available here.

New Fellows, elected July 2025

• Ben Anderson
• Katherine Aron-Beller
• Nicholas Baker-Brian
• Catherine Bates
• Samuel Beckton
• Saliha Belmessous
• Stacy Boldrick
• Stuart Brookes
• Robyne Calvert
• Steven Casey
• Richard Cassidy
• Song-Chuan Chen
• Margaret Coombe
• Esther Liberman Cuenca
• Antoine Destemberg
• Pragya Dhital
• John Fahey
• Andrew Fitzmaurice
• Isabelle Gapp
• Laura Gelfand
• Harrison Glancy
• Trevor Griffiths
• Aviva Guttmann
• Ewan Harrison
• Daniel Hill
• Peter Hodgkinson
• Michael Hooper
• Glenn Horridge
• Luke Houghton
• Christophe Huchet de Quénetain
• Alex Imrie
• Ben Jackson
• Marc Jaffre
• Michelle Johansen
• Geraldine Johnson
• David Katz
• Damien Kempf
• Sarah Kenny
• Daniel Langton
• Stefano Locatelli
• Matt Lodder
• Harriet Lyon
• Amy Matthewson
• Karen McAulay
• Claire McNulty
• Krista Milne
• Eloise Moss
• Olukoya Ogen
• Kathryn Olmsted
• Martin Pegler
• Helen Pfeifer
• Catherine (Katie) Pickles
• Helen Pierce
• Kerry Pimblott
• Oisín Plumb
• Peter Radford
• Dries Raeymaekers
• Eric Rauchway
• Anne Redgate
• Benedetta Rossi
• Alison Rowlands
• Raphael Schäfer
• Rachel Silberstein
• J.E. Smyth
• James Stafford
• Jeffrey Tatum
• Hillary Taylor
• Jennifer Tucker
• Steve Tuffnell
• Michelle Tusan
• Heidi Tworek
• Sarina Wakefield
• Stephen Walker
• Elise Watson
• David Wenkel
• Samuel White
• Kin Pan Wu
• Brandon Yen

New Associate Fellows, elected July 2025

• Abhimanyu Arni
• Susannah Bain
• Melody Bridges
• Alistair Cartwright
• Hiu Ki Chan
• Onor Crummay
• Christopher Davis
• Samantha Dobbie
• Razvan Dumitru
• Matthias Ebejer
• Ngozi Edeagu
• Shushun Gao
• Lorraine Grimes
• Christina Gundersen
• Courtney Herber
• Beth Hodgett
• Waliu Ismaila
• Zoë Jackson
• Anna Jamieson
• Pauline Jarvis
• Alexander Kelleher
• Debbie Kilroy
• Emily Lanman
• Ewan Lawry
• Gary Lawson
• Maroš Melichárek
• Henry Moore
• Safya Morshed
• Andrii Pastushenko
• Eóin Phillips
• Ellen Pilsworth
• Anna-Marie Pípalová
• Emily Price
• Liam Redfern
• Michelle Reynolds
• Beckie Rutherford
• Aruni Samarakoon
• Harry Sanderson
• Kathryn Steenson
• Guan Kiong Teh
• Natasa Thoudam
• Jonathan Tickle
• Reynold Kai Won Tsang
• Sylvia Valentine
• Diane Watts
• Sam Wilkinson
• Elena Yi-Jia Zeng
• Shuai Zhang
• Tom Zille

New Members, elected July 2025

• Sergey Alexandrov
• Hannah Bardsley
• Victoria Bentata Azaz
• Ryan Born
• Claire Clarke
• Nicola Clarke
• Barry County
• Katie David
• Caroline Dillon
• Patrick Gallagher
• Ellis Grayson
• Stephen Harper
• Jill Harrison
• Timothy Harte
• Harriet Hendley Jones
• LeSabre Hubbard
• Nicholas Hughes-Browne
• John Jones
• Swaminathan Kannan
• Habeeb Liasu
• Sakshi Mavi
• Daryl Mears
• Jim Metcalfe
• Anna Montell Magnusson
• Zak Mudie
• Saradindu Mukherjee
• James Ndua
• Angela OConnor
• Caroline Offord
• Christoph Pelanek
• Snizhanna Petrova
• Jennifer Phillips
• Lukas Pohle
• Mithra Iyengar Ramprabu
• Vishak Ratheesh Nair
• Paolo Ronchi
• Huw Rowlands
• Adam Royle
• Maria Saltrese
• Olga Sieluzycka
• Michael Wasserman
• Anthony Wentworth
• Rowan Whitcomb
• Theron Williams
• Mark Wilson

New Postgraduate Members, elected July 2025

• Luke Adams
• Zamdar Ahmad
• Benjamin Ansley
• Mary Banks
• Paul Barrett
• Alexander Birt
• Tom Black
• Amber Bourke
• Conor Brockbank
• Amy Maria Butler
• Marco Büttner
• Emily Cadger
• Thomas Casemore
• Ben Cassell
• Bidisha Chutia
• Melis  Doeh
• Lisa Dyer
• Evelyn Earl
• Matthew Eaton
• Ali Erginsoy
• Madeleine Fontenay
• Elizabeth Gilkey
• Soumyadeep Guha
• Maeve Hagerty
• Kevin Harris
• Carter Henley
• Anna Hill
• Aaron Hoggle
• Amy Hopkins
• Boyang Hou
• Po Chun Hsu
• Roseanne Hurst
• Iacovos Iacovides
• Evrydiki Ioannidou
• Thomas Keegan-Hobbs
• Ronan Kennedy
• Ayuk Lawrence Asam
• Sayan Lodh
• Ashe Loyd
• Chris Maloney
• Lynn Marriott
• Henriette Marsden
• Jennifer McFarland
• Jonathan Moore
• Simon Mortimer
• Clare O’Neill
• James Orchin
• Loan Peuch
• Clive Porro
• Mathis Prevost
• Pili Rigam
• Shadi Seifouri
• Nitika Sharma
• Carly Silvers
• Charmaine Simpson
• Nur’Ain Taha
• Adebukola Taiwo
• Amy Thorpe
• Rogan Vlahakis
• Lewis Willcox
• Klaudia Wroblewska
• Haohao Zhang

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HEADER IMAGE: Album of Tournaments and Parades in Nuremberg, German, Nuremberg, late 16th–mid-17th century, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York, public domain.

 

Video and audio recordings of the Society’s 2025 Prothero Lecture, with Professor Peter Gatrell FBA, are now available. This year’s lecture — ‘Refugee World(s): a Twentieth-Century Retrospective’ — took place on 2 July, in person and online.

Watch the video of the lecture

Listen to the lecture

 

 

Peter’s lecture drew on his recent research in the archives of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva. The archive contains the letters and petitions that refugees sent to the UNHCR in the post-1945 era, and provides the historian with rare insights of how refugees presented their situation and the responses they received. The numerous case files preserved by the UNHCR disclose the hopes, aspirations and rights claims of displaced people from many different parts of the world, whether or not they were recognised under international refugee law.

Peter Gatrell FBA is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Manchester. His recent publications include: The Unsettling of Europe: the Great Migration, 1945 to the Present (2019) and the co-authored Refugee Voices in Modern Global History: Reckoning with Refugeedom (2025), which draws on the rich resources of the UNHCR archives to present the personal experiences of mass displacement.

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Forthcoming public lectures with the Royal Historical Society

The Society’s lecture programme continues in September / October with the following three events:

• Friday 12 September 2025: Professor Yasmin Khan (Oxford), ‘Mars and Britannia: the British Imperial Way of Warfare’ (Mary Ward House, London and online)
• Wednesday 17 September 2025: Professor Matthew J. Smith (UCL), ‘Twice Removed: Slavery, Big Data, and the Cultures of Caribbean Ancestral Histories’, part of the Society’s visit to historians at the University of Aberdeen
• Wednesday 22 October 2025: Professor Tim Grady (Chester), ‘Unravelling the Tapestry of Death: Britain and the Memory of the Two World Wars’, part of the Society’s visit to historians at the University of Suffolk, Ipswich

Further details of each of these lectures will be released shortly.