The results of the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) were published on 12 May 2022. Professors Mark Jackson and Margot Finn -- respectively chair and deputy chair of the History sub-panel for REF2021 -- offer an overview of this latest review, its headline findings for History, and their reflections on disciplinary developments since REF2014.

In her new article for 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society', Professor Rebekah Clements explores the complexities of political sovereignty in early modern Japan through the practice of 'alternate attendance'. Long understood as statements of a shogun central power, parades also served regional lords and their communities as opportunities to confirm mutual dependence in maintaining local hierarchies of political authority.

The Society is very pleased to have recently received generous support, from the Marc Fitch Fund, for the second phase of its archive development programme. Over the coming months we will research and catalogue three further areas of the Society's collection: papers relating to the running, membership and management of the Society, from its foundation in 1868; papers of the Camden Society, founded in 1838 to its merger with the RHS in 1897; and correspondence of the Tudor historian, Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton. Here we preview some early finds, charting the activities of the Society from the 1870s to 1950s.