The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the election of two new members to its governing Council. These appointments follow this year’s election round for new Councillors in autumn 2026.
The newly elected Councillors will take up their roles following the next meeting of the Society’s Council on 27 November and will hold their posts for four years.
Dr Myra Bom and Professor Susan R. Grayzel will replace two serving Councillors who next month step down at the end of their terms: Dr Helen Paul and Professor Olwen Purdue.
Dr Myra Bom
Myra Bom specialises in the history of Western Europe and the Latin East in the twelfth century. She has published on medieval women, the military orders, and the French crown.
Her latest titles include Constance of France. Womanhood and Agency in Twelfth-Century Europe (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022); ‘The Crusades Regesta: Evolution, Adaptation, and Resilience,’ (with Anna Gutgart) in Digital Medieval Studies. Crusades and Computers, ed. L. K. Morreale and S. Gilsdorf (York: Arc Humanities Press, 2026): 19-34; and ‘King Louis VII of France’s Crusader Manuscript (BnF lat. 14378)’, in The Crusaded Eastern Mediterranean, ed. M. El-Mehreb and J. Wilson (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming): 83-108.
Myra is an Honorary Research Associates at Royal Holloway, University of London, and teaches medieval history at the University of Cambridge. She is also an editor of the conference proceedings of the Society of the Crusades and the Latin East and a member of the editorial board of the Crusades Regesta, an online research tool.
I am looking forward to working with historians of different interests, backgrounds and careers to shape our collective professional future. Financial pressures and artificial intelligence challenge the current practice of history, but this change will also bring opportunities, and I see a bright time ahead.
Professor Susan R. Grayzel
Susan R. Grayzel (Sue) is Professor of History at Utah State University, teaching courses in modern European history, the cultural history of modern, total war, and gender and women’s history. She also co-directs the Bringing War Home Project: Object Stories, Memory, and Modern War; this co-curated community history project partners with localities and engages university students in the digital collection and preservation of both objects and stories about the things carried to and from the sites of armed conflict.
Her books include Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (UNC Press, 1999); Women and the First World War (2002, 2nd edition Routledge 2024); At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Cambridge, 2012); The First World War: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford St Martins, 2012, 2nd Edition, 2021); and the co-edited volume Gender and the Great War (Oxford, 2017) with colleague Tammy Proctor.
Her latest monograph, The Age of the Gas Mask: How British Civilians Faced the Terrors of Total War (Cambridge, 2022), uses one material object — the civilian gas mask — to explore how the state and individuals responded to the first weapons of mass destruction. More recently, she was co-editor with Ann-Marie Einhaus and Catriona Pennell for the Special Issue ‘Teaching the First World War in the Twenty-First Century: Pedagogies in Dialogue’, First World War Studies 17: 1-2 (2026).
Sue’s current scholarly interests include a new project on experiences of pregnancy during the Second World War along with other research on sexual violence and international law; gender, citizenship, and civil defense; and the intersections among gender, emotions, and wartime technology.
I am very grateful for the trust shown in me by the members who supported my joining the RHS Council. I feel privileged to have the opportunity to join in the work of the RHS as it plays a key role in facilitating conversations to defend and promote access to resources for history and applied history across national borders in this critical moment.