Call For Submissions: New Edited Collection ‘Women In Power: Female Agency in the Nineteenth Century

Edited by Dr. Fern Riddell, Dr. Emma Butcher, and Dr. Bob Nicholson, ‘Women In Power: Female Agency in the Nineteenth Century’ will seek to challenge the view that the public sphere was overwhelmingly male, and reveal the many places in which Victorian women wielded power and agency.

This edited collection will showcase both the professional and domestic power held by women of the Victorian era, but we are especially interested in women who shaped the world around us through their public lives. We are also keen to push past the lens of victimhood that has often shaped studies of women’s agency in this period and to explore alternative ways of understanding their experiences. Our goal is to normalise nineteenth-century female agency as everyday and pervasive, rather than transgressive and rare.

We welcome global submissions from all disciplines exploring women’s lives in the nineteenth century, from established scholars, early career researchers, PhD students, as well as non-affiliated independents. Submissions can include, but are not limited to, case studies of individuals, as well as broad themes and identities exploring:

  • Race
  • Colonialism
  • Journalism & Publishing
  • Science & Ideas
  • Culture
  • Trade Unions
  • Politics
  • War
  • Sexuality and Gender
  • Trans lives
  • Exploration
  • Business Women

We intend for this to be an edited collection of chapters roughly 8-10,000 words in length, but at this stage need only expressions of interest.

Please email a title and abstract of 250-300 words to: wxminpower@gmail.com

Submission deadline: 28th February, 2021.

 

RHS Officers & Councillors

The Society’s Council & Governance

The Royal Historical Society is predominantly a voluntary organisation. Its Council (the Society’s trustees) is made up of RHS Fellows each of whom serves a four-year term working on our various committees and working parties.

Selected members of Council hold Officer posts with responsibility for, among other areas, research and education policy or publishing. Council is led by the RHS President who also serves a four-year term. Every year the Fellowship elects three new members of Council using a preferential voting system. Council members come from a wide variety of backgrounds and research interests.

 

The Royal Historical Society President

Professor Emma Griffin

Emma Griffin is Head of School and Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London. Prior to joining QMUL in September 2023, Emma was Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia. Emma researches on the social and economic history of Britain during the period 1700-1870, with a particular interest in gender history, the industrial revolution, and working-class life. Her most recent publications include Liberty’s Dawn. A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution (2013) and Bread Winner. An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy (2020), both published by Yale. She is also a former editor of History (the academic journal of the Historical Association) and of the Historical Journal.

Emma is a frequent contributor to radio and television, having written and presented several Radio 4 documentaries on diverse aspects of her research, from the history of fox-hunting, to the industrial revolution, to the gender pay gap and its history. She was a historical advisor for the Channel 4 drama, The Mill and co-presented The Real Mill with Tony Robinson on More4, and has appeared as an expert contributor on several radio and television programmes, including BBC1’s Who do you Think You Are? and Radio 4’s In Our Time.

Emma became the 35th President of the RHS in November 2020.

Officers of the Royal Historical Society


Professor Lucy Noakes
President-Elect of the Royal Historical Society

Lucy Noakes is Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex and a social and cultural historian of early to mid 20th-century Britain. Appointed President-Elect and a Member of the RHS Council in January 2024, Lucy will take up the Presidency of the Royal Historical Society in November 2024.

As a specialist in the history of modern Britain, Lucy researches the experience and memory of those who have lived through conflict, with a particular focus on the First and Second World Wars. Her recent monographs include Dying for the Nation. Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain (2020) and War and the British: Gender, Memory and National Identity 1939-1991 (revised edition 2023). Lucy’s work has made extensive use of the Mass Observation Archive, of which she is now a trustee.

Before joining the University of Essex in 2017, Lucy Noakes held academic posts at the universities of Southampton Solent, Portsmouth and Brighton.

Professor Clare Griffiths
Vice President of the Royal Historical Society

Clare Griffiths is Head of History and Professor of Modern History in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University. In November 2023 she was appointed Vice President of the Royal Historical Society.

Prior to taking up her current position in Cardiff, she taught at the University of Sheffield, Wadham College, Oxford, and the University of Reading, and she has held visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Museum of English Rural Life.

Clare’s research focuses on the political and cultural history of Britain in the twentieth century, with a particular interest in the history of the countryside, agriculture and landscape. She is the author of Labour and the Countryside: the Politics of Rural Britain, 1918-1939 (Oxford University Press, 2007) and co-editor of Class, Cultures and Politics (OUP 2011). Her published articles and essays include work on political debates in Britain during the Second World War, the commemoration and historical memory of early nineteenth-century radicalism, and many aspects of British farming and rural life. She has also written extensively for the Times Literary Supplement, particularly on visual art.

Clare was a member of the Society’s Council from 2018 to 2021, during which time she served on, and subsequently chaired the Research Support Committee.

Dr Adam Budd
Secretary for Education and Chair of the Education Policy Committee

Adam Budd is Senior Lecturer in Cultural History and Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh.

Adam’s research focuses on authorship and print culture during eighteenth century, and on the development of history as an academic discipline. Prior to being appointed Secretary for Education, Adam served as an elected member of the RHS Council, between 2018 and 2022. As Secretary for Education, Adam is responsible for the Society’s policy on higher education and support for teaching.

Adam co-authored the RHS Report on Race, Ethnicity and Equality (2018) and has been involved in developing merit-based funding initiatives for early-career researchers, in addition to chairing RHS scholarship awards and research prizes. He is active with the Higher Education Academy and has led numerous Widening Participation initiatives. His latest book is Circulating Enlightenment: The Career and Correspondence of Andrew Millar, 1725-68 (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Professor Barbara Bombi
Secretary for Research and Chair of the Research Policy Committee

Barbara Bombi is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Kent. Her research interests cover ecclesiastical and religious history in the High Middle Ages (1200-1450). Barbara was elected RHS Secretary of Research and Chair of the Research Policy Committee in November 2023. In this role, Barbara oversees the Society’s work in speaking for historians on issues related to research and funding. Prior to this she served as an elected member of the RHS Council, 2019-23.

Barbara specialises in the medieval papacy and canon law, the Crusades of the early 13th century, and the history of the Military Orders. Her most recent monograph is Anglo-Papal Relations in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Study in Medieval Diplomacy (2019), published by Oxford University Press. Barbara was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2022.

Professor Jane Winters
Vice-President and Chair of the Publications Committee

Jane Winters is Professor of Digital History at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Jane has led or co-directed a range of digital humanities projects, including — most recently — Big UK Domain Data for the Arts and Humanities; Digging into Linked Parliamentary Metadata; Traces through Time: Prosopography in Practice across Big Data; The Thesaurus of British and Irish History as SKOS; and Born Digital Big Data and Approaches for History and the Humanities.

A former RHS Council member, Jane became Vice-President, Publications in 2020 with oversight of the Society’s print and online publications and the RHS’s contribution to debates on humanities publishing.

Councillors of the Royal Historical Society

Professor Caitríona Beaumont

Professor Caitríona Beaumont is Professor of Social History at London South Bank University and Director of Research for the School of Law and Social Sciences.  Her research focuses on the history of female activism and women’s movements in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain and Ireland. Her book, Housewives and Citizens: Domesticity and the Women’s Movement in England, 1918-64 was published in 2013 by Manchester University Press.

Recent journal articles and chapters feature research relating to gender and the interwar peace movement, the print culture of the Women’s Institutes and the Mothers’ Union and the application of social movement theory to the Irish suffrage and women’s movement. She is currently working on a history of intergenerational female activism in Britain, 1960-1980. She has also contributed web content to The British Library and 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War.

Caitríona sits on the editorial boards of Twentieth Century British History and Contemporary British History, is a member of Women’s History Network, Social History Society, Voluntary Action History Society and the Women’s History Association of Ireland, and co-convenes the IHR Contemporary British History Seminar Series. She was elected to the RHS Council in September 2021.

Dr Kate Bradley

Dr Kate Bradley is Reader in Social History & Social Policy in the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at the University of Kent. Her research  covers the history of social policy in the 20th century, and how voluntary, state and private welfare services are accessible (or not) to citizens. Her most recent book is Lawyers for the Poor: Legal Advice, Voluntary Action and Citizenship in England, 1890-1990 (Manchester UP, 2019). This project examined the campaigning and hands-on pro bono legal advice provision of individual lawyers, political parties, trade unions, charities, the press, and community activist groups, in order to try to uphold the rights of the neediest.

Kate joined the University of Kent in 2007, having previously held an ESRC postdoctoral fellowship in the Centre for Contemporary British History at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

Kate was elected to the RHS Council in September 2022. Prior to this appointment, she has served the historical community in several ways: co-founding History Lab in 2005, co-convening History UK in 2015-16, and as a member of the Social History Society committee since 2017.

Dr Melissa Calaresu

Melissa Calaresu is the Neil McKendrick Lecturer in History at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. She has written on the cultural history of the Grand Tour, urban space, ice cream, and street-vending in early modern Italy, with a particular focus on Naples. Her books include New Approaches to Naples c.1500–c.1800: The Power of Place (2013) and Food Hawkers: Selling in the Streets from Antiquity to the Present Day (2016).

Melissa has extensive experience of teaching and research, expertise in a wide range of neighbouring disciplines. She is currently writing a cultural history of the city of Naples through the household accounts of the Welsh artist Thomas Jones (1742-1803).

Professor Mark Knights

Mark Knights is Professor of History at the University of Warwick and was elected to the Council of the Royal Historical Society in November 2023. His research focuses on early modern political culture in Britain and its empire, and on the history of corruption.

Mark’s most recent publication is Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and its Empire 1600-1850 (OUP 2021). He is currently working on a cultural biography of a seventeenth-century merchant philosopher; a book charting the history of corruption in Britain and its empire from the 1620s to the 2020s; and the Oxford Handbook of the History of Corruption.

Mark is a member of the editorial boards of Boydell and Brewer’s ‘Eighteenth Century Studies’ series and of the journal Parliamentary History. He has held numerous posts in his department and University.

Professor Rebekah Lee

Rebekah Lee is Associate Professor in African Studies at Oxford University, which she joined in January 2022, and a former Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Rebekah’s research interests concern the social and cultural history of modern South Africa, and the history of health and medicine in sub-Saharan Africa, and curricular and pedagogical issues at all levels of history education. Rebekah’s most recent publication is Health, Healing and Illness in African History published by Bloomsbury in 2021. She is an editor of the interdisciplinary Journal of Southern African Studies. Rebekah is currently completing the manuscript of her latest book, Death and Memory in Modern South Africa.

Rebekah was elected to the RHS Council in September 2020.

Professor Simon MacLean

Simon MacLean is Professor of Medieval History at the University of St Andrews. A historian of Western Europe in the earlier Middle Ages, Simon’s research focuses on the Carolingian Empire and its successor kingdoms, 8th-12th centuries, and medieval queenship. His work has been published in numerous forums since 1998, and his most recent book is Ottonian Queenship (Oxford, 2017).

Simon has been involved in administration of teaching and postgraduate matters at the University of St Andrews for over a decade, and since 2018 has been Head of School. He has broad experience of the issues affecting the teaching and learning of history in modern academia.

Simon was elected to the Council of the RHS in September 2020.

Professor Iftikhar H. Malik

Iftikhar H. Malik is Professor-Emeritus at Bath Spa University, where he taught history for 27 years, following his five-year fellowship at St Antony’s College, Oxford. Presently, a member the Common Room at Wolfson College in Oxford, his Curating Lived Islam in the Muslim World: British Scholars, Sojourners and the Sleuths with Routledge came out in June 2021.

In November 2022, his The Silk Road and Beyond: Narratives of a Muslim Historian (Oxford University Press, 2020), received the UBL Award for the best non-fiction work in English in Pakistan.

Iftikhar’s other studies include Pashtun Identity and Geopolitics in Southwest Asia: Pakistan and Afghanistan since 9/11 (Anthem, 2016 & 2017); Crescent between Cross and Star: Muslims and the West after 9/11, (OUP, 2006); and Islam and Modernity: Muslims in Western Europe and the United States (Pluto, 2003). Iftikhar was elected to the RHS Council in November 2023.

Dr Emilie Murphy

Emilie Murphy is Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of York. She is a specialist of the cultural and religious history of England, and English-speaking people abroad, 1500-1700. Her scholarship focuses on sound and hearing, voice and language, and various aspects of performance culture. She is co-editor of Sensing the Sacred in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, and her essays have appeared in several major journals including Renaissance Quarterly, The Historical Journal and Renaissance Studies. Her current research project is The Reformation of the Soundscape in Early Modern England and she is a lead investigator on the AHRC funded research network, ‘Soundscapes in the Early Modern World’. 

Emilie enjoys sharing her research with a public audience, and has appeared as an expert contributor radio and television programmes including BBC 1’s Countryfile, and BBC Radio 4’s Making History.

Dr Helen Paul

Dr Helen Paul is a Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton. A historian of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth century, her work focuses primarily on the South Sea Company and enslavement.

Helen’s publications include The South Sea Bubble: an Economic History of its Origins and Consequences (2011) and she is a frequent contributor on programmes such as Radio 4’s In Our Time.

Helen was elected a Councillor of the Royal Historical Society in September 2022. She was previously, for six years, Honorary Secretary of the Economic History Society (EHS) and has also served as chair of the EHS Women’s Committee.

Professor Olwen Purdue

Olwen Purdue is Professor of Modern Social History at Queen’s University, Belfast where she works on the social history of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Ireland with a particular focus on social class, urban poverty and welfare. Olwen directs the Centre for Public History at Queen’s and is particularly interested in the role of public history in divided societies.

Olwen’s publications include The Big House in the North of Ireland: Land, Power and Social Elites, 1870-1960 (2009); The Irish Lord Lieutenancy 1541-1922 (2012); Urban Spaces in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (2018); and The First Great Charity of this Town: Belfast Charitable Society and its Role in the Developing City (2022). Her new monograph, Workhouse Child: Poverty, Child Welfare and the Poor Law in industrial Belfast, 1880-1918, is due out with Liverpool University Press in 2023, and an edited collection on Difficult Public Histories in Ireland is due out with Routledge in 2024. Olwen was formerly international editor for The Public Historian and is currently series editor for Liverpool University Press’ Nineteenth-Century Ireland series.

Olwen was elected to the RHS Council in September 2022. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Irish Museums Association, a member of the advisory board for the Ulster Museum, and a Governor of the Linen Hall Library.

Dr Emily Robinson

Emily Robinson is a Reader in British Studies at the University of Sussex and a historian of modern Britain, specialising in political ideas, identities, emotions and traditions.

Emily’s recent publications include The Language of Progressive Politics in Modern Britain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and articles in the Historical Journal, Twentieth Century British History, Rethinking History and Journal of the History of Ideas. Her next book, An Emotional History of Brexit Britain, co-authored with Jonathan Moss and Jake Watts, will be published by Manchester University Press in 2023.

Emily was elected to the Council of the Royal Historical Society in September 2020.

Dr Andrew Smith

Andrew W.M. Smith is Director of Liberal Arts at Queen Mary University of London. His work focuses principally on the French and Francophone world with an interest in identities beyond the frame of the nation state. Recent articles have addressed minority nationalism, decolonisation, the Second World War, and linguistic politics.

Andrew is the author of Terror and Terroir: The Winegrowers of the Languedoc and Modern France (Manchester University Press, September 2016), and editor (with Chris Jeppesen) of Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa: Future Imperfect? (UCL Press, March 2017). Andrew was previously the Society’s Honorary Director of Communications and RHS Honorary Secretary between 2021-23.

 

New and forthcoming titles in the Society’s Open Access book series

Now available, in print and online, Gender, Emotions and Power, 1750–2020 — edited by Hannah Parker and Josh Dyble — is the latest title in the Royal Historical Society’s New Historical Perspectives book series. This new collection offers a timely intervention into contemporary debates on emotions, gender, race and power by asking: ‘how are emotional expectations established as gendered, racialised and class-based notions’?

Chronologically and geographically broad, the essays cover settler colonies in southern Africa, post-unification Italy, Maoist China, the Soviet Union and British Raj, among others. Collectively the essays consider how emotional expectations have been generated, stratified and maintained by institutions, societies, media and those with access to power.

Gender, Emotions and Power, 1750–2020 is the 17th title in the Society’s New Historical Perspectives series for early career historians within 10 years of completing a PhD at a UK or Irish university. All titles are published online as Open Access editions and in paperback print with Open Access fees covered by the series partners: the Royal Historical Society, Institute of Historical Research and University of London Press. For more on the series, and how to submit a proposal, please see here.

 

 

 

Forthcoming titles in the series, available in 2024, include Martin Sypchal’s Mapping the State. English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act and Rachel E. Johnson’s Women’s Voices and Historical Silences in South Africa. Young Women and Youth Activism in the Anti-Apartheid Struggle.

Full online access to all of the titles is available via University of London Press.

 

 

Diana Paton, ‘Seeing Women & Sisters in the Archives of Atlantic Slavery’

Royal Historical Society Lecture, delivered 9 February 2018

“I was a few years back a slave on your property of Houton Tower, and as a Brown woman was fancied by a Mr Tumoning unto who Mr Thomas James sold me.”

Thus begins Mary Williamson’s letter, which for decades sat unexamined in an attic in Scotland until a history student became interested in her family’s papers, and showed it to Diana Paton. In this lecture, Paton will use the letter to reflect on the history and historiography of ‘Brown’ women like Mary Williamson in Jamaica and other Atlantic slave societies.

Mary Williamson’s letter offers a rare perspective on the sexual encounters between white men and Brown women that were pervasive in Atlantic slave societies. Yet its primary focus is on the greater importance of ties of place and family—particularly of relations between sisters—in a context in which the ‘severity’ of slavery was increasing. Mary Williamson’s letter is a single and thus-far not formally archived trace in a broader archive of Atlantic slavery dominated by material left by slaveholders and government officials. Paton asks what the possibilities and limits of such a document may be for generating knowledge about the lives and experiences of those who were born into slavery.

Professor Diana Paton is William Robertson Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh

 

Current Research Fellows and Grant Holders

The Society’s Research Funding supports a large number of historians across a range of activities: from studying for a Masters’ degree and finishing a PhD, to undertaking research and working on a project, such as writing an article.

The following individuals are current holders of RHS Fellowships and Grants in 2024. Each year, the Society awards c.£100,000 in research funding to historians through open competitions. In 2023, the Society is allocating a further £30,000 in one-off programmes, generously assisted by partner organisations and donors.

Full details, and call timetables, for all Royal Historical Society research funding are available here.

 


1. Centenary and Marshall Research Fellows, 2024-25

Held for 6 months, jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, the Centenary and Marshall Fellowships enable historians to complete their PhDs and receive research training:

Eve Pennington, is an RHS Centenary Fellow, 2024-25, held jointly with the Institute of Research, University of London.

‘Women, the built environment, and life narratives: reconstructing the relationship between gender and state-led urban development through the new towns in North-West England, c.1961-1989’

Eve is a RHS Centenary Fellow held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Eve is a fourth-year PhD researcher supervised by Charlotte Wildman and Penny Summerfield at the University of Manchester, where she previously completed her BA and MA in History.

Eve’s doctoral thesis interrogates the relationship between gender and state-led urban development in late-twentieth-century Britain, exploring the ways that women’s subjectivities and cultural constructions of femininity were produced in tandem with built environments like housing estates, workplaces, and transport networks. It focuses on three new towns established in north-west England during the 1960s and 1970s (Skelmersdale, Runcorn, and Central Lancashire) and analyses archival material produced by local policymakers and urban planners, as well as original oral history interviews conducted with women who moved to the towns during the late twentieth century.

Eve’s research sits at the intersection between urban history and women’s history, examining the ways that built environments reflected and reinforced gender relations, and reconstructing women’s agency to challenge inequalities through their use of urban space. Her regional approach problematises narratives of deindustrialisation, urban decay, and unemployment, reframing northern England as a site of experimentation, investment, and renewal.

 

Alexandra Plane is an RHS Centenary Fellow, 2024-25, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

‘Reconstructing the Scottish and English Libraries of King James VI and I’

Alexandra is a librarian and doctoral student co-supervised at Newcastle University and the National Library of Scotland through an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award. She previously completed a BA and MA in Classics at the University of Durham, as well as an MA in Library and Information Studies at UCL.

Her doctoral research seeks to reconstruct the Scottish and English libraries of King James VI and I. Despite King James’s significance for intellectual, political, religious and cultural history, at present very little is known about his libraries. This project employs a combination of traditional scholarship and newer digital approaches to remedy this, making it possible to better understand how Britain’s most scholarly monarch accessed and circulated knowledge and ideas. It sheds new light on James as an author and king who was keenly aware of the power books held not only for learning, but also as gift objects and tools for royal image-building.

 

Rebecca Orr is an RHS Marshall Fellow, 2024-25, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

‘The Ex-Empire Builders: Migrants of Decolonisation and the Transformation of the Post-War Workplace’

Rebecca is a PhD researcher in History at the European University Institute. She previously studied for a BA in History at the University of Cambridge and an MA in Modern History at the University of Warwick. Before starting her PhD, she worked for two years as a research support assistant for the Global History of Capitalism project at the University of Oxford.

Her thesis, entitled ‘The Ex-Empire Builders: Migrants of Decolonisation and the Transformation of the Post-War Workplace’, looks at how formal decolonisation resulted in the emergence of new types of professional work and workplace in post-war Britain and its former colonies. Highlighting the interconnection between work and migration, her research explores the constitutive role played by former colonial civil servants in three workplaces on the rise: private security, universities and charitable organisations. The thesis relates broader structural changes to the intimate and familial. Drawing upon oral history interviews with the children of colonialists and settlers, the research explores how the economic consequences of formal decolonisation registered at the level of the state, family, and individual.

 

Rebecca Tyson is an RHS Marshall Fellow, 2024-25, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

‘Sailing to Conquest: Maritime Activity and Identity in Eleventh-Century Normandy’

Rebecca’s doctoral research provides a hitherto largely uncharted maritime context for the Norman invasion of England, by looking back at the earlier eleventh century in Normandy to explore where the maritime knowledge, experience, and ships may have been found for Duke William to draw upon in the early months of 1066. To date, studies of eleventh-century Normandy and the Norman invasion of England have consistently adopted a terrestrial perspective. In contrast, my research centres the understudied place of maritime activity in the century preceding the Norman cross-Channel invasion, offering for the first time a historical perspective recognising that Normandy’s coastline was a frontier as dynamic and significant as its land border.

This novel approach thereby not only provides much needed insight into a fundamental but critically overlooked aspect of the Norman invasion, but also demonstrates that, when Normandy’s earlier eleventh-century history is reconsidered from a non-terrestrial point of view and despite being overlooked as a maritime polity, there is a wide range of evidence that points to an active maritime tradition in Normandy in the century preceding 1066, that has wider implications for fully understanding the management of the resulting cross-Channel Anglo-Norman realm.

 


2. Early Career Fellowship Grant holders, 2024

Held for up to 6 months, Early Career Fellowship Grants provide support for post-doctoral researchers to work on a defined project, such as writing an article or book proposal:

  • Jonathan Tickle – awarded October 2024
  • Alice Kinghorn – awarded October 2024
  • George Townsend – awarded October 2024
  • Megan Yates – awarded October 2024
  • Margaret Gray – awarded October 2024

3. Martin Lynn Scholarship in African History, 2024-25

Awarded annually, the Martin Lynn Scholarship supports research in the history of Africa:

  • Nigel Browne-Davies – awarded October 2024

4. Masters’ Scholarships in History, 2024-25

Awarded annually, Masters’ Scholarships support students studying for a Masters’ degree in History at a UK university. Scholarships are reserved for early career historians from groups underrepresented in academic history:

  • Alana Assis, to study for an MPhil in African Studies at the University of Cambridge
  • Megan Barber, to study for an MA in History at the University of Winchester
  • Nicole Butler, to study for an MA in Social & Cultural History at the University of Leeds
  • Peter Eakin, to study for an MA in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Manchester
  • Darcy Gill, to study for an MA in History at Queen Mary University of London
  • Avin Houro, to study for an MSt in Global and Imperial History at the University of Oxford
  • Sophie Mattholie, to study for an MA in Public History at the University of York
  • Lucas Radford, to study for an MA in Maritime History at the University of Plymouth

The Society is very grateful to the Past & Present Society and the Scouloudi Foundation for its support of the Masters’ Scholarships programme in 2024-25.


5. Postgraduate Research Support Grants, 2024

Introduced in Spring 2023, Postgraduate Research Support Grants are available to History students (who are Postgraduate Members of the Royal Historical Society), currently studying for a Masters degree or PhD to undertake historical research.

  • Benjamin Gladstone – awarded February 2024
  • Phoebe McDonnell – awarded February 2024
  • Sarah Mason – awarded February 2024
  • Nathan Meades – awarded February 2024
  • Kathrina Perry – awarded February 2024
  • James Squires – awarded February 2024
  • Theodora Broyd – awarded August 2024
  • Ellie Grigsby – awarded August 2024
  • Ewan Lawry – awarded August 2024
  • Chukwuemeka Oko Otu – awarded August 2024

6. Early Career Research Support Grants, 2024

Introduced in Spring 2023, Early Career Research Support Grants are available to historians within 5 years of submitting their PhD in a historical subject (who are members of the Royal Historical Society) to undertake research. 

  • Thomas Burnham – awarded February 2024
  • Nicolò Ferrari – awarded February 2024
  • Yui Chim Lo – awarded February 2024
  • Mariana Zegianini – awarded February 2024
  • James Brocklesby – awarded August 2024
  • Adam Quibell – awarded August 2024
  • Taiwo Bello – awarded August 2024
  • Matthew Bayly – awarded August 2024

7. Open Research Support Grants, 2024

Introduced in Spring 2023, Open Research Support Grants are available to all historians (who are members of the Royal Historical Society) who are not postgraduate students or early career researchers (within 5 years of completing a PhD). Open Research Support Grants provide funds to historians to undertake historical research.

  • Thomas Leahy – awarded October 2024
  • Angela Byrne – awarded October 2024
  • Jasmine Calver – awarded October 2024
  • Denis Casey – awarded October 2024

8. Workshop Grants, 2024

Awarded annually from 2022, Workshop Grants provide support for groups of historians to meet and discuss shared projects in detail. Workshop Grants are open to historian at all career stages.

RHS Workshop Grant holders for 2024:

  • ‘(Re)Visioning London through “Black” Dialogues’ — lead organiser: Arunima Datta (North Texas)
  • ‘Pat Thane: Reflections on History, Policy and Action’ — lead organiser: Helen Glew (Westminster)
  • ‘Network Building Symposium for Historians in Post 92 Institutions’ — lead organiser: Elizabeth Goodwin (York St John)
  • ‘A Workshop in Ruins’ — lead organiser: Claire Kennan (King’s College, London)
  • ‘Mobilising Imperial History: Crime, Policing and Control in the British Empire’ — lead organiser: Aparajita Mukhopadhyay (Kent)
  • ‘Present and Precedent in the Church Councils of Late Antique Iberia’ — lead organisers: Jamie Wood and Graham Barrett (Lincoln)

9. Funded Book Workshop Grants, 2024-25

First awarded in 2023, Funded Book Workshop Grants provide support for authors currently writing a second or third monograph to hold a day workshop with six invited readers to discuss a draft manuscript

Funded Book Workshop Grant holders for 2024-25:

  • Jodi Burkett (University of Portsmouth) for her project: International Students in Post-Imperial Britain: Experiences of Activism, Community, and Racialisation, c.1960-1990′
  • Selena Daly (University College London) for her project: ‘The World is Our Homeland: A Global History of Italian Emigration’

10. Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships, 2023-24

First awarded in 2023, Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships provide support for historians to trial new approaches in teaching History in UK Higher Education, or to undertake surveys of current aspects of History teaching.

Fellowship holders in the academic year 2023-24:

  • Natalya Cherynshova (Queen Mary, University of London) for her project to translate 20th-century Ukrainian and Belarussian primary source materials for undergraduate teaching.
  • Liesbeth Corens and Jenny Bangham (Queen Mary, University of London) for ‘Histories of Disability Toolkit’.
  • David Geiringer (QMUL) for ‘Placing Migrant Histories Centre Stage’
  • Laura Harrison, Martin Simpson, Rose Wallis, Mark Reeves and Ian Brooks (University of the West of England) to develop a new history course to support teaching in computing and sustainability
  • Amy King (University of Bristol) for ‘The F-Word: Understanding. European Fascism Then and Now’
  • Karen Smyth (University of East Anglia) for ‘Paston Footprints Heritage Trails’
  • David Stack (University of Reading) for ‘Promoting Wellbeing Through History Teaching’

11. David Berry Fellowship in the History of Scotland the Scottish People, 2024

First awarded in May 2024, the David Berry Fellowship provides support for historians to undertake research in the history of Scotland and the Scottish people.

Fellowship holders in 2024:

  • Fiona Jackson (University of Bristol) to support her PhD research on ‘Musical exchange within British-Soviet diplomatic relations, and the key role of the Baltic Republics and Georgia’.
  • Mhairi Winfield (University of St Andrews) to support her PhD research on ‘Scottish Libraries before Carnegie: An Evaluation of Scottish Library Culture (1450-1883)’

 

PhD Fellowships

 

The Royal Historical Society offers 4 annual PhD Fellowships for postgraduate historians in their third year of research at a  university in the UK or overseas. The Fellowships comprise:

  • Two RHS Centenary Fellowships: each Centenary Fellowship runs for 6-months and is worth £8,295 for final-year PhD students to complete their dissertations and to develop their research career.
  • Two RHS Marshall Fellowships: each Marshall Fellowship runs for 6-months and is worth £8,295 for final-year PhD students to complete their dissertations and to develop their research career.

Marshall Fellowships are supported by the generosity of Professor Peter Marshall FBA, formerly Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King’s College London and President of the Royal Historical Society from 1996 to 2000.

All Fellowships are open to candidates without regard to nationality or academic affiliation. They are jointly held with the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London, where Fellows are based.


How to Apply for 2025-26

  • Applications for Marshall and Centenary Fellowships for the academic year 2024-25 have now closed. Details of the next call, for the academic year 2025-26, will be announced in Spring 2025.
  • Centenary and Marshall Fellowships are open to candidates without regard to nationality or current academic affiliation.
  • The Fellowships are awarded to doctoral students who are completing a thesis in history (broadly defined) who have undertaken at least three years’ research on their chosen topic (and not more than four years full-time or six years part-time) at the beginning of the session for which the awards are made.
  • These awards cannot be held in conjunction with any other substantial maintenance grant.

For full information on how to apply for the Centenary or Marshall Research Fellowships and to obtain further guidelines, please go to the IHR’s Doctoral Fellowships page.


Centenary and Marshall Fellows, 2024-25

 

Eve Pennington, is an RHS Centenary Fellow, 2024-25, held jointly with the Institute of Research, University of London.

‘Women, the built environment, and life narratives: reconstructing the relationship between gender and state-led urban development through the new towns in North-West England, c.1961-1989’

Eve is a RHS Centenary Fellow held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Eve is a fourth-year PhD researcher supervised by Charlotte Wildman and Penny Summerfield at the University of Manchester, where she previously completed her BA and MA in History.

Eve’s doctoral thesis interrogates the relationship between gender and state-led urban development in late-twentieth-century Britain, exploring the ways that women’s subjectivities and cultural constructions of femininity were produced in tandem with built environments like housing estates, workplaces, and transport networks. It focuses on three new towns established in north-west England during the 1960s and 1970s (Skelmersdale, Runcorn, and Central Lancashire) and analyses archival material produced by local policymakers and urban planners, as well as original oral history interviews conducted with women who moved to the towns during the late twentieth century.

Eve’s research sits at the intersection between urban history and women’s history, examining the ways that built environments reflected and reinforced gender relations, and reconstructing women’s agency to challenge inequalities through their use of urban space. Her regional approach problematises narratives of deindustrialisation, urban decay, and unemployment, reframing northern England as a site of experimentation, investment, and renewal.

 

Alexandra Plane is an RHS Centenary Fellow, 2024-25, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

‘Reconstructing the Scottish and English Libraries of King James VI and I’

Alexandra is a librarian and doctoral student co-supervised at Newcastle University and the National Library of Scotland through an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award. She previously completed a BA and MA in Classics at the University of Durham, as well as an MA in Library and Information Studies at UCL.

Her doctoral research seeks to reconstruct the Scottish and English libraries of King James VI and I. Despite King James’s significance for intellectual, political, religious and cultural history, at present very little is known about his libraries. This project employs a combination of traditional scholarship and newer digital approaches to remedy this, making it possible to better understand how Britain’s most scholarly monarch accessed and circulated knowledge and ideas. It sheds new light on James as an author and king who was keenly aware of the power books held not only for learning, but also as gift objects and tools for royal image-building.

 

Rebecca Orr is an RHS Marshall Fellow, 2024-25, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

‘The Ex-Empire Builders: Migrants of Decolonisation and the Transformation of the Post-War Workplace’

Rebecca is a PhD researcher in History at the European University Institute. She previously studied for a BA in History at the University of Cambridge and an MA in Modern History at the University of Warwick. Before starting her PhD, she worked for two years as a research support assistant for the Global History of Capitalism project at the University of Oxford.

Her thesis, entitled ‘The Ex-Empire Builders: Migrants of Decolonisation and the Transformation of the Post-War Workplace’, looks at how formal decolonisation resulted in the emergence of new types of professional work and workplace in post-war Britain and its former colonies. Highlighting the interconnection between work and migration, her research explores the constitutive role played by former colonial civil servants in three workplaces on the rise: private security, universities and charitable organisations. The thesis relates broader structural changes to the intimate and familial. Drawing upon oral history interviews with the children of colonialists and settlers, the research explores how the economic consequences of formal decolonisation registered at the level of the state, family, and individual.

 

Rebecca Tyson is an RHS Marshall Fellow, 2024-25, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

‘Sailing to Conquest: Maritime Activity and Identity in Eleventh-Century Normandy’

Rebecca’s doctoral research provides a hitherto largely uncharted maritime context for the Norman invasion of England, by looking back at the earlier eleventh century in Normandy to explore where the maritime knowledge, experience, and ships may have been found for Duke William to draw upon in the early months of 1066. To date, studies of eleventh-century Normandy and the Norman invasion of England have consistently adopted a terrestrial perspective. In contrast, my research centres the understudied place of maritime activity in the century preceding the Norman cross-Channel invasion, offering for the first time a historical perspective recognising that Normandy’s coastline was a frontier as dynamic and significant as its land border.

This novel approach thereby not only provides much needed insight into a fundamental but critically overlooked aspect of the Norman invasion, but also demonstrates that, when Normandy’s earlier eleventh-century history is reconsidered from a non-terrestrial point of view and despite being overlooked as a maritime polity, there is a wide range of evidence that points to an active maritime tradition in Normandy in the century preceding 1066, that has wider implications for fully understanding the management of the resulting cross-Channel Anglo-Norman realm.


HEADER IMAGE: University College London: the main buildings seen from Gower Street. Engraving. Wellcome Collection, public domain

 

 

History in the News

Dr Susan Cohen ‘Eleanor Rathbone and the Refugees’

2016 marks the 70th anniversary of the death of the independent MP, Eleanor Rathbone. Known as ‘the MP for refugees’ her campaigns on behalf of refugees in the Interwar and 2WW period have a strong resonance with the current crisis, carrying a powerful message as pertinent today as it was then. 

Dr Susan Cohen’s monograph Rescue the Perishing: Eleanor Rathbone and the Refugees was published in 2010. She is currently researching the role of women within refugee organisations in Britain before and during the Second World War. Susan is co-founder of the Remembering Eleanor Rathbone group.


holocaust-memorial-day-2016-themeThe theme of Holocaust Memorial Day this year was ‘Don’t stand by’, a salutary reminder of the duty we all have, as responsible citizens, to speak out on behalf of people who are being oppressed or persecuted. Following the family motto ’what ought to be done, can be done’ Eleanor Rathbone, Independent MP for the Combined English Universities from 1929, embraced this obligation, devoting her working life to the needs of the under-represented in society, regardless of race, religion or gender. She never had a plan in her mind, but instead took up causes that came to her attention and which called for a strong advocate, moving seamlessly from national social and welfare concerns, equality for women, eliminating child poverty, improving housing and a host of other injustices. As a parliamentarian, only one of fourteen women returned in the 1929 election, she put her skills to good use, becoming the most powerful backbencher of the time.

EleanorRathbone GR

Portrait of Eleanor Rathbone by Sir James Gunn, NPG

She extended the scope of her activism to Britain’s colonies, and to Palestine, then ruled under a British mandate, with feminist issues at the heart of her work. But it was the refugee cause, precipitated by Hitler’s accession to power in Germany in January 1933 that set her on a path that was to literally exhaust her, hastening her untimely death in January 1946. An anti-Fascist, anti-Nazi and anti-appeaser, she was the only female politician to denounce the new Nazi regime when the House of Commons met on 13 April 1933, warning of the dangers the regime posed to world peace. Presciently, she spoke of how the Nazis were “inflicting cruelties and crushing disabilities on large numbers of law-abiding peaceful German citizens, whose only offence is that they belong to a particular race or religion or profess certain political beliefs.” These were the very people whom she came to support, and for whom she became the most outspoken critic of government policy.

by Howard Coster, half-plate film negative, 1938

Duchess of Atholl, 1938, NPG

In 1937 she and her fellow MP, Katherine, Duchess of Atholl, organised the rescue of some 4,000 children from the Basque combat zone during the Spanish Civil War and when Eleanor and her allies found out, in early 1939, that more Republicans were at risk of summary executions and reprisals, and that the British government was unwilling to help rescue them or offer protection for rescue vessels, they simply circumvented officialdom. Ships were organised to run the blockade and the National Joint Committee succeeded in getting several boatloads of refugees out, and to safety. But it was the fateful events of 1938 that completely altered the landscape – from the annexation of Austria in March; the orchestrated anti-Jewish pogroms across Germany and Austria, ‘Kristallnacht’, of 9/10 November; and the intervening signing of the Munich agreement in September, which gave the Nazis carte blanche to occupy the Sudetenland in West Czechoslovakia. The latter in particular created an unprecedented refugee crisis as thousands of people, including but not exclusively Jews, sought safety in, and then escape from Prague.

Eleanor Rathbone felt a personal responsibility for Britain’s part in this human disaster, and in response set up, and led her purely voluntary Parliamentary Committee on Refugees in November 1938, quickly gathering more than 200 supporting MPs. The remit of the PCR was:

to influence the Government and public opinion in favour of a generous yet carefully safeguarded refugee policy, including large-scale schemes of permanent settlement inside or outside of Empire; also, since thousands of refugees would perish while awaiting such schemes – temporary reception homes in this country where refugees can be maintained, sorted out and eventually migrated, except in cases where their abilities can be profitably utilised here without injustice to our own workers.”

Jewish refugees.

Jewish refugees cross from Czechoslovakia to Bratislava. Photo: Getty Images

The remit has an uncanny resonance with the current refugee crisis. With some minor alterations, it could have been written in 2016. The Czech refugees were now at the heart of Eleanor Rathbone’s campaigning activities as she urged the government to issue more visa, relax entry restrictions and make good their promise of a loan to Czechoslovakia. The outbreak of war meant the cancellation of any outstanding visas, and dashed hopes of escape, so she now turned her attention to refugees at home, as she championed their fair and humane treatment. Now considered enemy aliens, and classified by a tribunal system, there were some 55,000 Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria amongst the approximatly 80,000 refugees living here at the time. Some 6,782 in Category B, had mobility restrictions imposed upon them, affecting their ability to work and to be financially independent. Employers were desperate to take on suitable refugee workers, but permits were taking forever to be issued. This treatment, she argued, was counter-productive . It struck at the heart of her sense of justice and she did everything in her power to ameliorate the situation. But she was always patriotic, and never lost sight of the priority, which was the safety of the country and its citizens.

21st May 1940: A British soldier guarding an internment camp for 'enemy aliens', at Huyton housing estate in Liverpool. (Photo by Marshall/Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Internment camp in Liverpool, May 1940. Photo: Getty images

Deputations, questions, letters, phone calls, liaising with every refugee committee and activist, and enlisting the support of other MPs were all part of her armoury. The mass internment of around 27,600 enemy aliens in May 1940 served only to exacerbate an already challenging situation and to plunge Eleanor Rathbone and her committee into a maelstrom of activity as they sought the release of thousands of refugees. She put over 80 parliamentary questions on internment alone; the issues pursued including the importance of separating Nazi internees from non-Nazis; the shocking living conditions in many of the camps; the food shortages and lack of medical care. Once again the parallels with refugee camps and detention centres for asylum seekers cannot be ignored. The response to Rathbone’s urgent requests for a more generous immigration policy followed a pattern, including claims that it would fuel domestic anti-Semitism. In a desperate effort at countering this assertion, in late 1942 she established the National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror. The remit was to disseminate information at home about the mass extermination of Jews in Europe (information that the BBC in particular was unwilling to broadcast) and to promote small scale rescue missions. Despite the lack of success, the fact that Eleanor doggedly pursued these goals in the face of government intransigence and kept the subject in the public eye, is testimony to her humanity and determination.

Poignant words, written in 1943, highlight the struggle she envisaged people would have to expiate their shame:

If peace came tomorrow, we could not forget the millions for whom it would come too late, nor wash our hands of the stain of blood.’”

Nor was she able to hide her shame at Britain’s myopia, for she was convinced that with:

…greater foresight, courage (sic) there would have been no war, and if our policy towards refugees had been less miserably cautious, selfish and unimaginative, thousands of those already dead or in danger of death, might now be free and happy, contributing from their rich store of talent and industry to the welfare of mankind.”  [i]

Today’s political situation is not the same as that which prevailed during the Second World War. But Eleanor Rathbone’s assessment of the official response to the humanitarian disaster then resonates with the current crisis now. Calls for an imaginative and generous response reflect her belief that Britain’s tradition of liberty, generosity and asylum were of profound importance, even in wartime.

[i] EFR `Speech notes on the Refugee Question’, 16 December 1942. RP XIV. 3.85.


Eleanor Rathbone died 70 years ago in January 1946, and is being commemorated at various events throughout the year. Her refugee work will be remembered at a one-day conference being held in central London on Monday 20 June 2016, World Refugee DayWelcome to Britain? Refugees Then and Now. A conference in memory of Eleanor Rathbone 1872-1946, the ‘MP for refugees’.

Date
Headline

 

Precarious Professionals: New Historical Perspectives on Gender & Professional Identity in Modern Britain

 

**PLEASE NOTE: this event has been postponed and will now take place later in the year, date tbc**

 

Book Launch and Panel Discussion

14.00 GMT, Tuesday 22 March 2022, Live online via Zoom

 

 

Published in October 2021, Precarious Professionals is an edited collection of essays which use gender to explore a range of professional careers, from those of pioneering women lawyers and scientists to ballet dancers, secretaries, historians, and social researchers.

The book reveals how professional identities could flourish on the margins of the traditional professions, with far-reaching implications for the study of power, privilege, and expertise in 19th and 20th century Britain.

Precarious Professionals appears in the RHS ‘New Historical Perspectives’ series and is is now available free, Open Access, to read ahead of the event.

 

Contributors to the panel

  • Professor Christina de Bellaigue (University of Oxford)
  • Dr Laura Carter (Université de Paris / LARCA)
  • Professor Leslie Howsam (University of Windsor / Ryerson University)
  • Dr Claire G. Jones (University of Liverpool)
  • Professor Helen McCarthy (University of Cambridge)
  • Professor Susan Pedersen (Columbia University)
  • Dr Laura Quinton (New York University)
  • Professor Emma Griffin (RHS President and University of East Anglia) (chair)

This event brings together seven of the book’s contributors to discuss the relationship between gender and professional identities in historical perspective, and to reflect on researching and writing histories of professional work in precarious times. 

About our panel

Christina de Bellaigue is Associate Professor of History at Oxford and a Fellow of Exeter College. She is a social and cultural historian of nineteenth century France and Britain, with research interests in the history of reading and of education, and of childhood and adolescence. Christina’s current project concerns middle class family strategies and social mobility. Her publications include  Home Education in Historical Perspective (2016) and Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France, 1800–1867 (2007).

Laura Carter is Lecturer in British History at the Université de Paris, LARCA, CNRS, F-75013 Paris, France. She has published articles on popular history, education, and social change in twentieth-century Britain in the journals Cultural and Social History, History Workshop Journal, and Twentieth Century British History. Her first book, Histories of Everyday Life: The Making of Popular Social History in Britain, 1918-1979, was published by Oxford University Press in the Past & Present book series in 2021.

Leslie Howsam is Emerita Distinguished University Professor at the University of Windsor (Canada) and Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Digital Humanities at Ryerson University. She is editor of the 2015 Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book and author of Old Books and New Histories: An Orientation to Studies in Book & Print Culture (Toronto University Press, 2006).    

Claire G. Jones is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests focus on the cultural and social history of science, from the late-eighteenth century through to the early-twentieth, with special emphasis on femininity, masculinity, inclusion and representation. She has published widely in these areas and co-edited the Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science (2022).

Helen McCarthy is Professor of Modern and Contemporary British History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College. She is a historian of modern Britain and author of three books: The British People and the League of Nations (Manchester University Press, 2011); Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat (Bloomsbury, 2014); and Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Susan Pedersen is Gouverneur Morris Professor of British History at Columbia University, where she teaches British and International History. Her most recent book is The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford, 2015). She is now writing a book about marriage and politics in the Balfour family. She writes regularly for the London Review of Books.

Laura Quinton is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at New York University and a Resident Fellow at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Her current book project, Ballet Imperial: Dance and the New British Empire, explores the unexpected entanglements of ballet and British politics in the twentieth century. Her writing has appeared in The Historical Journal, Twentieth Century British History, and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism.

Emma Griffin is President of the Royal Historical Society and Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia.

 

HEADER IMAGE, clockwise from top left: politician, Mary Agnes Hamilton, at her desk in Carlton House Terrace, c.1948; sociologist Viola Klein, 1965; historian Dame Lillian Penson running her seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, London, 1957; Marie Stopes in her laboratory, Manchester, c.1904–6; mathematician and engineer, Hertha Ayrton, in her Laboratory; lawyer and political reformer, Eliza Orme, 1889.

 

RHS Lecture and Events: Full Programme for 2022 >

 

RHS History Today Prize Past Winners

2000
First prize Lucy Marten-Holden (University of East Anglia), ’A study into the siting and landscape context of early Norman castles in Suffolk’
Second prize Alison Rosenblitt (Wadham College, Oxford), ’Symmetry and asymmetry in Anglo-Saxon Art’
Third prize Jennifer Brook (University of Newcastle), ‘”I forgive you in advance”: Pasternak and the publication of Dr Zhivago’.

2001
First prize
Jeanette Lucraft (University of Huddersfield), ‘Missing From History: A reinstatement of Katherine Swynford’s Identity’
Second prize Michael Finn (University of Liverpool), ‘Mythology of war: civilian perceptions of war in Liverpool,1914-1938′
Third prize Timothy Leon Grady (University of Keele), ‘Academic Anti-Semitism: the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen and the Jews 1929-1938’

2002
First Prize Paul Shirley (University College London), ‘Tek Force wid Force!’ Marronage, Resistance and Freedom Struggles in the Experience of North American Emigré Blacks in the Bahamas, 1783-1789’
Second Prize Antony Craig Lockley (University of Manchester), ’Propaganda and Intervention at Archangel, 1918-1919’
Third Prize Anna Chapman (University of East Anglia), ’Piety, Patronage and Politics: An Exploration of Fact and Fiction in the Early Legend of St. Edmund’

2003
Joint First Prize Sami Abouzahr (University College London), ‘The European Recovery Program, and American PolicyTowards Indochina, 1947-1950’ and Charmian Brownrigg (University of Central Lancashire), ’The Merchant Mariners of North Lancashire and Cumberland in the Mid-Eighteenth-Century’.
Special Mention Andrew Syk (University of Derby), ’The 46th Division on the Western Front’

2004
First Prize Andrew Arsan (University of Cambridge), ‘Shukri Ghanem and the Ottoman Empire 1908-1914′
Highly Commended Thomas Neuhaus (University of Essex), ’’Sing me a swing song and let me dance’: The Swing Youth and cultural dissent in the Third Reich’
Proxime Accessit Sebastian Walsh (University of Durham), ‘Most trusty and beloved’: Friendship, trust and experience in the exercise of informal power within the early Elizabethan polity – the case of Sir NicholasThrockmorton’

2005
First Prize Anna Mason (Wadham College, Oxford), ‘The English Reformation and the Visual Arts reconsidered’
Highly Commended Matthew Greenhall (University of Durham), ‘From Cattle to Claret: Scottish economic influence in northeast England, 1660-1750’

2006
First Prize Edward Swift (University of Durham), ‘Furnishing God’s Holy House: John Cosin and Laudian Church Interiors in Durham’
Proxime accessit Matthew Neal (University of Cambridge), ‘The Fall of Walpole’ and James Williamson (UCL), ‘To what extent, if at all, did the Marshall Plan impose limits upon Post War Labour Government’s policies of nationalization and creation of a welfare state?’

2007
First Prize Morgan Daniels (Queen Mary, University of London), ‘Scarcely seen or felt’. British Government andthe 1960s satire boom’
Highly Commended Liz Homans (University of Wales, Bangor), ‘The abolition of capital punishment in the 1960s’ and Dmitri Lietvin (Selwyn College, Cambridge), ‘The philosophy of John Sergeant and the response toEnglish Deism, 1690-1700’

2008
First Prize Catherine L. Martin (University of Greenwich), ‘The People’s Demobilization: a case study in politics,propaganda and popular will in 1945’
Highly Commended Katherine McMullen (University of Oxford), ‘Pulpit and Press: attributions of blame for prostitutionin the 1670s and 1680s’ and Robbie Maxwell (University of Edinburgh), ‘Analyse and assess the impact of George S Benson’s‘ Americanism’ between 1941 and 1964, particularly through the films of the National EducationProgram’

2009
First Prize Eleanor Betts (Queen Mary, University of London), ‘Who Will Help? The Impact of the 1866 CholeraEpidemic on the Children of East London
Highly Commended Charles Cornish-Dale (University of Exeter), ‘Land, Power, Politics and Patronage: A Case Study of Orcof Abbotsbury’

2010
First Prize Alexander Baggallay (University of Edinburgh), ‘Myths of Mau Mau Expanded: The role of rehabilitation in detention camps during the state of emergency in Kenya, 1954-1960’
Highly Commended David Kenrick (University of Liverpool), ‘Identity and the Politics of Survival: White Rhodesia, 1965-1980’

2011
Richard Lowe-Lauri (University of Durham), ‘The decline of the Stamford bull-running, c. 1788-1840’

2012
Frederick Smith (University of Warwick), ‘’Discerning cheese from Chalke’: Louvainist Propagandaand recusant identity in 1560s England”

2013
Anna Field (Cardiff University), ‘Masculinity and Myth: the Highway-woman in Early Modern England, 1681-1800’

2014
Rebecca Pyne-Edwards Banks (University of Derby) ‘Cutting Through the Gordian Knot: The British Military Service Tribunals During the Great War’.

2015
Cora Salkovskis (University of Oxford) ‘Psychiatric photography and control in the ‘benevolent asylum’ of Holloway: the construction of image, identity and narrative in photographs of female patients in the late nineteenth-century asylum‘.

2016
Emma Marshall (University of Durham) ‘Women’s Domestic Medical Practice: Recipe Writing and Knowledge Networks in 17th Century England’.

2017
Abigail Greenall (University of Manchester) ‘Magical Materials and Emotion in the Early Modern East Anglian Household’.

2019
Ella Sbaraini (University of Cambridge) ‘In Praise of Older Women’.

 

RHS Whitfield Prize Winners

1977
K.D. Brown, John Burns (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1977)

1978
Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1978)

1979
Patricia Crawford, Denzil Holles, 1598-1680: A study of his Political Career (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1979)

1980
D. L. Rydz, The Parliamentary Agents: A History (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1979)

1981
Scott M. Harrison, The Pilgrimage of Grace in the Lake Counties, 1536-7 (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1981)

1982
Norman L. Jones, Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559 (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1982)

1983
Peter Clark, The English Alehouse: A social history, 1200-1830 (Longman, 1983)

1984
David Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750-1850 (Hutchinson, 1984)

1985
K.D.M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor (Cambridge University Press, 1985)

1986
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County,1500- 1600 (Clarendon Press, 1986)

1987
Kevin M. Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The politics of literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge University Press, 1987)

1988
J.H. Davis, Reforming London, the London Government Problem, 1855-1900 (Clarendon Press, 1988)

1989
A.G. Rosser, Medieval Westminster, 1200-1540 (Clarendon Press, 1989)

1990
Duncan M. Tanner, Political change and the Labour party, 1900-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

1991
Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge University Press, 1991)

1992
Christine Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401 -1499 (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

1993
Jeanette M. Neeson, Commoners: common right; enclosure and social change in England,1700- 1820 (Cambridge University Press, 1993)

1994
V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English people, 1770-1868 (Oxford University Press, 1994)

1995
Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715-1785 (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

1996
Paul D. Griffiths, Youth and Authority: Formative Experience in England, 1560-1640 (Clarendon Press, 1996)

1997
Christopher Tolley, Domestic Biography: the legacy of evangelicalism in four nineteenth century families (Clarendon Press, 1997)

1998
Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (Yale University Press, 1998)

1999
John Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers (Past and Present Publications, 1999)

2000
Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500-1700 (Clarendon Press, 2000)

2001
John Goodall, God’s House at Ewelme: Life, Devotion and Architecture in a Fifteenth Century Almshouse (Routledge, 2001)
and
Frank Salmon, Building on Ruins: The Rediscovery of Rome and English Architecture (Ashgate, 2001)

2002
Ethan H. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 2002)

2003
Christine Peters, Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

2004
M.J.D. Roberts, Making English Morals: Voluntary Association and Moral reform in England,1787-1886 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

2005
Matt Houlbrooke, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (University of Chicago Press, 2005)

2006
Kate Fisher, Birth Control, Sex and Marriage in Britain, 1918-1960 (Oxford University Press, 2006)

2007
Stephen Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford University Press, 2007)
and
Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900 (Princeton University Press, 2007)

2008
Stephen M. Lee, George Canning and Liberal Toryism, 1801-1827 (RHS/Boydell & Brewer:2008)
and
Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford University Press: 2008)

2009
Nicholas Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-ownership, Compensation and British Society at the end of Slavery (Cambridge University Press: 2009)

2010
Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences, 1590-1640 (Cambridge University Press: 2010)

2011
Jaqueline Rose, Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy,1660-1688, (Cambridge University Press: 2011)

2012
Ben Griffin, The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain. Masculinity, Political Culture and the Struggle for Women’s Rights, (Cambridge University Press: 2012)

2013
Scott Sowerby, Making Toleration: The Repealers and The Glorious Revolution (Harvard University Press: 2013)

From this point the prize is awarded for and presented in the year following publication.

2015
John Sabapathy, Officers and Accountability in Medieval England 1170-1300 (Oxford University Press, 2014)

2016
Aysha Pollnitz, Princely Education in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

2017
William M. Cavert, The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
and
Alice Taylor, The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124-1290 (Oxford University Press, 2016)

2018
Brian N Hall, Communications and British Operations on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

2019
Ryan Hanley, Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c.1770-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

2020
Niamh Gallagher, Ireland and the Great War: A Social and Political History (Bloomsbury, 2019)

2021
Jackson Armstrong, England’s Northern Frountier: Conflict and Local Society in the Fifteenth-Century Scottish Marches (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
and
Lauren Working, The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

2022
Kristin D. Hussey for Imperial Bodies in London. Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

2023
Síobhra Aiken for Spiritual Wounds. Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War (Irish Academic Press, 2022)