Homepage

Nominations are now invited from Fellows of the Royal Historical Society to stand for election to the Society’s governing Council. The Society seeks to elect three new Council members (trustees) in 2025, to replace serving Council members. Newly elected Councillors will take up their roles from December 2025.

Closing date for nominations: Monday 11 August 2025.

The work of the Royal Historical Society (RHS) is governed by its Council, which comprises ‘Officers’ (Trustees with a specific remit) and ‘Councillors’ (Trustees without portfolio).

Trustees of the Society play a vital role in working on behalf of our fellows, members and the greater historian community in establishing our mission, vision and strategy, as well as considering crucial governance matters that ensure the ongoing sustainability of our charitable work.

---

The newly-elected Councillors will perform a full and active role in the Society’s governance and its work to champion and support historians of all kinds, the historical profession, and the practice of history.

This is an important time for the Society as it looks to launch its new three-year strategy, 2026-28, under the leadership of its President, Professor Lucy Noakes, and supported by the Society’s professional office based at University College London.

In accordance with By-law XXIV, Fellows of the Royal Historical Society are invited to nominate current Fellows, willing to serve as Councillors for a term of four years that commences in December 2025.

Please see the Society’s website for the institutional affiliations and subject expertise of current Members of Council.

The Society desires that the membership of its Council be fully representative of the community of historians in the United Kingdom.

Nominations must be supported by one Proposer and four Seconders, who are current Ordinary, Retired or Emeritus Fellows of the Society. 

The call for nominations runs to Monday 11 August with voting due to open in the week commencing 18 August. Voting by Fellows will close in the week commencing 22 September, with results announced in October.

For more on the role of an RHS Councillor, and how to submit a nomination, please see here.

Submission of nominations is via the Society’s online applications platform, here.

 

This year the Society publishes three new volumes in its Camden series of scholarly editions of primary sources. The first two volumes are published in June and August and available online and in print from Cambridge University Press.

NEW, VOLUME 69: The Papers of Admiral George Grey, edited by Michael Taylor (June 2025)

The Papers of Admiral George Grey presents the memoir, journal, and correspondence of George Grey, son of the Whig prime minister Earl Grey.

The volume documents the Grey family’s experience of the Whig ministry of 1830–1834, and George Grey’s own naval career which took him from the Battle of Navarino during the Greek War of Independence, to a decisive survey of the Falkland Islands, and then to the capital cities of South America during their pivotal early decades of independence

In doing so, the volume sheds new light on the political, diplomatic, naval, and imperial histories of the early and mid-nineteenth century.

The Papers of Admiral George Grey is published online and in print by Cambridge University Press (from June 2025). Due to a subvention from the Society, this volume will be available fully open access.

 

FORTHCOMING, VOLUME 70: The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489-1541), edited by Helen Newsome-Chandler (August 2025)

This volume presents the surviving holograph correspondence of Margaret Tudor, queen of Scots (1489–1541) as a stand-alone edition for the first time.

The 111 holograph letters (written in Margaret’s own hand) and 4 ‘hybrid’ letters (written by a scribe, with a postscript or subsection by Margaret herself) form an unprecedented epistolary archive, featuring the largest collection of holograph correspondence written in English or Scots of any medieval or early modern queen.

The letters chart Margaret’s life as a late medieval queen, including the challenges she faced in negotiating her dual identity as queen of Scots and an English princess, and her important role in Anglo-Scots politics and diplomacy in the early sixteenth century.

The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489-1541), is published online and in print by Cambridge University Press (from August 2025).

---

The third and final Camden volume published in 2025 — A Collector Collected: The Journals of William Upcott, 1803-1823, edited by Mark Philp, Aysuda Aykan and Curtis Leung — is published in November.

---

Recent volumes in the Camden series

Recent volumes in the series include:

The Household Accounts of Robert and Katherine Greville, Lord and Lady Brooke, at Holborn and Warwick, 1640-1649, edited by Stewart Beale, Andrew Hopper and Ann Hughes (November 2024).

• Robert Greville, 2nd Lord Brooke, was a prominent figure amongst the opposition to Charles I, a religious radical and intellectual who emerged as a successful popular leader in the early months of the English Civil War. This volume publishes the richly detailed household accounts kept for Brooke and his widow, Katherine, on an annual basis between 1640 and 1649.

Allen Leeper’s Letters Home, 1908–1912. An Irish-Australian at Edwardian Oxford, edited by David Hayton (July 2024).

• Allen Leeper, Oxford undergraduate and future Foreign Office mandarin, wrote regularly to his family in Australia from 1908 until he left university in 1912. Leeper’s letters, in Balliol College archives and the State Library of Victoria, record his experiences at Balliol, among a ‘golden generation’ decimated by the First World War, and on his extensive travels in Europe. They provide a vivid picture of a continent on the eve of war, written by someone whose background afforded a degree of objectivity.

The Last Days of English Tangier. The Out-Letter Book of Governor Percy Kirke, 1681–1683, edited by John Childs (November 2023).

• Governor Percy Kirke’s Out-Letter Book, here transcribed verbatim and annotated, covers the terminal decline of English Tangier, ending just before the arrival of Lord Dartmouth’s expedition charged with demolishing the town and evacuating all personnel. In 152 official letters, Kirke’s correspondence traces the decay of both the town’s military fabric and the soldiers’ morale and effectiveness, and the impossibility of reaching a satisfactory modus vivendi with the leaders of the besieging Moroccan armed forces.

La Prinse et mort du roy Richart d’Angleterre, and Other Works by Jehan Creton, edited and translated by Lorna A. Finlay (June 2023).

• Jehan Creton accompanied Richard II on his expedition to Ireland in 1399 and witnessed his capture by Henry Lancaster, who usurped the throne to reign as Henry IV. Creton’s account is of crucial importance for historians of the period, as he contradicts the official version of events in the Parliamentary Roll. This a completely new translation of the work, correcting the previous edition dating from 1824. This new Camden edition also includes Creton’s other known writings, the two epistles and four ballades.

Introductions to these and other recent Camden volumes are available from their editors via the Society’s blog.

---

About the Camden series

The Royal Historical Society’s Camden Series is one of the most prestigious and important collections of primary source material relating to British History, including the British empire and Britons’ influence overseas.

The Society (and its predecessor, the Camden Society) has since 1838 published scholarly editions of sources—making important, previously unpublished, texts available to researchers. Each volume is edited by specialist historians who provide an expert introduction and commentary.

The complete Camden Series now comprises over 385 volumes of primary source material, ranging from the early medieval to late-twentieth century Britain. The full series is available via Cambridge Journals Online, providing an extraordinarily rich conspectus of source material for British history as well as insights into the development of historical scholarship in the English speaking world.

Full online access to all Camden Series titles is available to all Fellows and Members of the Royal Historical Society as part of the Society’s Member Benefits.

The Camden Series is edited by Dr Richard Gaunt (University of Nottingham) and Professor Siobhan Talbott (Keele University).

Richard is Associate Professor in History at the University of Nottingham, with expertise in the political and electoral history of late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain. Siobhan is Professor of Early Modern History at Keele University, with research expertise in the economic and social history of Britain and the Atlantic World. Both have extensive experience of preparing and publishing scholarly editions of primary texts.

Richard and Siobhan welcome submissions for future Camden volumes. If you have a proposal for a Camden Society volume, please complete and submit the Camden Series Proposal Form and send your completed proposal to the Editors: camden.editors@royalhistsoc.org.

 

 

 

 

 

The Society currently invites applications for the following four schemes — open to historians across a range of career stages — with closing dates between 11 July and 5 September 2025. For further information on each programme, eligibility and how to apply please follow the links below.

---

Closing dates in July 2025

• Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships providing funding of between £500 and £1,250 to support innovations in the teaching of history in higher education, with projects to take place in the academic year 2025-26. Applicants must also be members of the Royal Historical Society. Next closing date: Friday 11 July 2025.
• Funded Book Workshops providing funding of £2,000 per workshop to host an in-person day seminar for historians who are currently writing a second or third monograph. Workshops bring together six specialist readers to discuss a book manuscript in detail prior to submission to the publisher. Applicants must also be members of the Royal Historical Society. Next closing date: Friday 11 July 2025.

---

Closing dates in September 2025

• Martin Lynn Scholarship in African History providing a grant of £1,500 to support postgraduate research for a PhD in African history. The Scholarship is open Postgraduate Members of the Royal Historical Society, currently studying for a PhD. Next closing date: Friday 5 September 2025.
• Early Career Fellowship Grants provide funding of £2,000, maximum, for discrete research projects lasting no more than six months. Grants are open to early career historians within five years of submission of their doctoral thesis. Applicants must also be members of the Royal Historical Society. Next closing date: Friday 5 September 2025.

---

Details of current holders of Royal Historical Society Fellowships and Grants are available here.

All enquiries about Research Funding should be sent to the Society’s Membership and Grants Officer at: membership@royalhistsoc.org.

HEADER IMAGE: Bowl with a scholar, anon, c.1575-99, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, public domain.

 

The latest volume of the Society’s Camden series makes available The Papers of Admiral George Grey. Edited by Michael Taylor, this new volume brings together the memoir, journal, and correspondence of the naval officer George Grey (1809-1891), son of the Whig prime minister Earl Grey.

The volume documents the Grey family’s experience of the Whig ministry of 1830–1834, and George Grey’s own naval career which took him from the Battle of Navarino during the Greek War of Independence, to a decisive survey of the Falkland Islands, and then to the capital cities of South America during their pivotal early decades of independence.

In doing so, Michael’s volume sheds new light on the political, diplomatic, naval, and imperial histories of the early and mid-nineteenth century. To accompany publication, Michael has also written on George Grey and his work to collect the papers for the Society’s blog.

The full text of The Papers of Admiral George Grey is now available Open Access via Cambridge University Press, following a subvention by the Royal Historical Society.

---

The Royal Historical Society’s Camden Series is one of the most prestigious and important collections of primary source material relating to British history, including the British empire and Britons’ influence overseas.

The Series makes important, previously unpublished, texts available to researchers. Each volume is edited by a specialist historian who provides an expert introduction and commentary. The complete Camden Series now comprises over 380 volumes of primary source material, published by Cambridge University Press, ranging from the early medieval to late-twentieth century Britain.

---

 

In 2025, the Society will publish three new Camden volumes.

Forthcoming titles are: The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489-1541), edited by Helen Newsome-Chandler, which will appear in August 2025 and A Collector Collected: The Journals of William Upcott, 1803-1823, edited by Mark Philp, Aysuda Aykan and Curtis Leung (November).

 

Eight monographs and eight journal articles have been shortlisted for this year’s Royal Historical Society First Book and Early Career Article prizes.

The shortlists follow an open call for eligible books and articles, published in 2024. Two winners will be announced, in July, for each prize.

Winners of the First Book Prize will each receive £1000 while those for the Early Career Article prize receive £250. Our congratulations to all sixteen authors whose work has been shortlisted in 2025.

---

The eight monographs shortlisted for the First Book Prize are:

• Royal Justice and the Making of the Tudor Commonwealth, 1485-1547, by Laura Flannigan (Cambridge University Press)
• Intimate Subjects: Touch and Tangibility in Britain’s Cerebral Age, by Simeon Koole (University of Chicago Press)
• Female Servants in Early Modern England, by Charmian Mansell (British Academy / Oxford University Press)
• The Capital Market of Manila and the Pacific Trade, 1668-1838: Institutions and Trade during the First Globalization, by Juan Jose Rivas Moreno (Palgrave MacMillan)
• Segregated Species: Pests, Knowledge, and Boundaries in South Africa, 1910–1948, by Jules Skotnes-Brown (Johns Hopkins University Press)
• The Quislings. The Trials of Norwegian Wartime Collaborators, 1941–1964, by Anika Seemann (Cambridge University Press)
• Pistols in St Paul’s: Science, Music, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century, by Fiona Smyth (Manchester University Press)
• Desire and Disunity: Christian Communities and Sexual Norms in the Late Antique West, by Ulriika Vihervalli (Liverpool University Press)

Further details of each monograph are available here.

---

The eight journal articles shortlisted for the Early Career Article Prize are:

• Beth Bhargava, ‘The National Front and Environmental Politics, 1967–90’, Modern British History
• James Burns, ‘The Bandit, the Holy Man, and the Slave in the Early Medieval West’, Journal of Late Antiquity
• Katherine Burns, ‘‘She died from grief’: Trauma and Emotion in Information Wanted Advertisements’, Slavery & Abolition
• Aisha Djelid, “The master whished to reproduce”: Slavery, Forced Intimacy, and Enslavers’ Interference in Sexual Relationships in the Antebellum South, 1808–1861′, American Nineteenth Century History
• William Jones, “You are going to be my Bettman”: Exploitative Sexual Relationships and the Lives of the Pipel in Nazi Concentration Camps’, The Journal of Holocaust Research
• Michaela Kalcher, ‘The Self in the Shadow of the Guillotine: Revolution, Terror and Trauma in a Parisian Diary‘, History Workshop Journal
• Matthew Lee, ‘Slavery, Colonialism and Civic Culture: The Development of Philanthropic Institutions in North East Scotland’, Northern Scotland
• Ollie Randall, ‘Cricket, Literary Culture and In-Groups in Early Twentieth-Century Britain’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Further details of each article are available here.

 

Jonathan Morris, Professor of History and Director of Research Culture and Environment at the University of Hertfordshire, has been appointed Chair of the History sub-panel for REF2029. The History subject panel will be responsible for assessing submissions for the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework (REF) which is expected to report in 2029. History is one of 34 disciplinary categories for which panels are currently being assembled.

Between 2018 and 2023 Jonathan was a member of the Royal Historical Society’s Council and served as its Secretary for Research and chair of the Research Policy Committee to November 2023.

News of the appointments of panel chairs and their deputies was made by Research England on 22 May. An announcement on the deputy chair for the History sub-panel is expected shortly.

The Society is monitoring developments in the REF2029 cycle and provides guides and updates as part of the Advocacy & Policy section of its website.

 

This week the Society’s President, Professor Lucy Noakes, along with Councillors Dr Cath Feely and Dr Melissa Calaresu, visited historians at the Cornwall campus of the University of Exeter, at Penryn.

The visit included meetings with historians working in the department and wider university, students and researchers, university managers, community history groups and partners with whom the department works, and members of the Society resident in west Cornwall.

The visit included a public event, on 21 May, ‘Cultural Memory and the Two World Wars’, with Lucy and Catriona Pennell, Professor of Modern History and Memory Studies in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cornwall, at the University of Exeter, Penryn. Our thanks to Catriona as the visit’s host and all who attended the discussion sessions and public event.

---

You can read more about the Society’s recent two-day visit to staff and students at the University Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cornwall (HaSS Cornwall) here: ‘Royal Historical Society praise for University’s Cornwall historians’ (published by the University of Exeter).

---

UK visits to historians are a regular feature of the Society’s annual event’s programme. Forthcoming visits are to the University of Aberdeen (17 and 18 September) and the University of Suffolk at Ipswich (21 October), to meet with academic historians, students, public history groups, and Society members from the area.

We are delighted to announce that the guest lecture at Aberdeen (Wednesday 17 September) will be given by Professor Matthew J. Smith (UCL and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery). Further details of these forthcoming visits will be released shortly.

 

 

 

At its latest meeting on 2 May 2025, the RHS Council elected 85 Fellows, 53 Associate Fellows, 78 Members and 101 Postgraduate Members, a total of 337 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, Germany, India, Japan, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, 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 68 different universities in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, India, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, the United States, and Zambia.

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 26 May and 11 August 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 May 2025

• Samuel Agbamu
• Diane Marie Amann
• Kerri Andrews
• Ed Armston-Sheret
• William Baker
• Mou Banerjee
• Yaqoob Khan Bangash
• Michael Barkham
• Vanessa Berridge
• Jennifer Bond
• Claire Burridge
• Jessamy Carlson
• Alison Chand
• Juan Cobo Betancourt
• Christopher Cowell
• Poppy Cullen
• Julie deGraffenried
• Clare Downham
• Pamela Edwards
• Jeremy Filet
• Paul Finkelman
• Maria Fragoulaki
• Ian Friel
• Kevin Geddes
• Laura Gelfand
• Georgios Giannakopoulos
• Marianne Gilchrist
• John Gilmour
• Roberto Gonzalez Arana
• Christopher Grey
• Bendor Grosvenor
• Rachel Haworth
• Amanda Herbert
• Benjamin Hoffmann
• Melanie Holihead
• Poul Holm
• Jarrod Hore
• Henry Irving
• Felicity Jensz
• Amit K. Suman
• Yoshinori Kasai
• Nicki Kindersley
• Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
• Vicky Long
• Eve MacDonald
• Neil MacGillivray
• Malcolm MacLean
• Alan Macniven
• Roger McDermott
• Marc Milner
• Claire Morelon
• Colm Murphy
• Julia Neville
• Patrick O’Connor
• Linda Parker
• Chris Perry
• Stavroula Pipyrou
• Margarite Poulos
• Lindsay Powell
• Sonia Purnell
• Tyson Retz
• Iain Robertson
• Terry Robinson
• Michael Robinson
• Sam Rose
• William Rosenau
• Catherine Ross
• Lucie Ryzova
• Priyasha Saksena
• Tony See
• Sishuwa Sishuwa
• Tom Smith
• Fiona Smyth
• Gareth Stansfield OBE
• Victor Stater
• Nigel Tallis
• Richard Taws
• Robert Tomczak
• Shaun Tougher
• Philippa Tudor
• Natale Vacalebre
• Dominik Waßenhoven
• Martin Watts
• Vanessa Wilkie
• Przemyslaw Wiszewski

New Associate Fellows, elected May 2025

• John Abernethy
• Pier Paolo Alfei
• Scott Allsop
• Ayebawaduanyu Benjamin
• Gregory Billam
• Amy Blaney
• George Brocklehurst
• Francesco Bromo
• Robert Brown
• Simon Buck
• Gordon Campbell
• Chris Cassells
• Adam Cook
• Rachel Coombes
• Sarah Elizabeth Cox
• Paula Dobrowolski
• Thomas Dobson
• Anni Donaldson
• Charlotte Eaton
• Chloe Emmott
• George Entwistle
• Meryl Faiers
• Finola Finn
• Karima Gaci
• Daniella Gonzalez
• Leonard Hodges
• Dimitra Kardakari
• Rhian Elinor Keyse
• Marzia Maccaferri
• Yu Hon Mak
• Connor McBain
• Daniel  McDonald
• Niki Miles
• Keith Milne
• Andrew Morris
• Lorraine Murray
• Fatims Naveed
• Des O’Rawe
• Oliver Parken
• Carlo Alberto Petruzzi
• Serin Quinn
• Morgan Robinson
• Robert Runacres
• Akuressa Sanjeewa
• Martin  Sorowka
• Francesca Strobino
• Chaojing Sun
• Nathaniel Tapley
• Charles Trumpess
• Alice van den Bosch
• Camille Vo Van Qui
• Anna Walsh
• Haoyang Zhao

New Members, elected May 2025

• Mark Acton
• Rzhwan Amin
• Gill Appleby
• Nick Austin
• Akinola Awodeyi-Akinsehinwa
• Rawaa Barnes
• Douglas Beard
• Charles Bell
• Matthew Bezant
• Thomas Birkett
• Jilian Bissett
• Steven Bright
• Hannah Brown
• Danusia Car
• Anthony Cherrington
• S Phani Chitti
• Jeremy Coles
• Thomas Cowan
• Mike Crew
• Freya Cushman
• Gerard Daly
• Emily Downs
• Ioana Dumitrica
• Gordon Fisher
• Rahul G K
• Francisco Javier Gamboa-Felix
• lorna Goodwin
• James Grant Peterkin
• Christopher Green
• Sven Gustafsson
• Poly Hajipieris
• John Holberg
• Rebecca Hutchison
• Charles Ijuye-Dagogo
• Mohsan Jaffery
• Fairooz Jahan
• Jill James
• Thapasya Jayaraj
• Royston Jones
• Benjamin Keirle
• James Knight
• Sai Sravan Koparthi B S Venkat
• Mark Lindley-Highfield of Ballumbie Castle
• Matthew MacDonald
• Heather Mayall
• Penny McCormick
• Bikash Meher
• Owen Miller
• Cody Mitchell
• Ananthakrishnan Palanikumar
• John Pascale
• Morgan Patrick
• Valentin-Sorin Păun
• Saumak Podder
• Daniel Porteous
• Sharon Lisa Rhodes
• Laura Roberts
• Noel Sadac
• Eleanor Scott
• Jessica Secmezsoy-Urquhart
• Gurjap Singh
• Jean Spenceley
• Rhianna Swift
• Gladhys Elliona Syahutari
• Joseph Terry
• Oliver Thums
• Vlad Tudorache
• Igor Uboldi
• Steven Wade
• Sandra Wainwright
• Jerry Walton
• Michael Ward
• James Webb
• Jonathan Welford-Carroll
• Andrew Whalley
• Adam Williams
• Andrew Young
• David Young

New Postgraduate Members, elected May 2025

• Azrin Afrin
• Swadha Agrawal
• Ana Ines Aldazabal
• Jobial Alex
• Marcus Andreopoulos
• Amanda Ariss
• Gideon Arthur Ofori
• Sabrina Autenrieth
• Natalie Barnard
• Katy Bennett
• Angela Billings
• James Blewett
• Emily Bolton
• Andrew Peter Bramwell
• Yvonne Campbell
• Peter Carroll
• Hunter Christensen
• Denise Connor
• Megan Cook
• João Gabriel Covolan Silva
• Andrew Craig
• Brian Curragh
• Anthony Curtis
• João Custódio Aldegalega
• Alice Daniel
• Adrian Davis
• Yusuke Deki
• Luke Doherty
• Madeleine Duperouzel
• Lisa Edwards
• Laura Elliott
• Cath Fincher
• Eilidh Finlayson
• Haroon Forde
• Ferreira Gaëlle
• Santiago Garcia Pardo
• Raphaëlle Goyeau
• Stephen Graham
• Corrie Green
• David Green
• Joel Griffett
• Amy Hall
• Abby Hammond
• Alice Hastings-Bass
• Jasper Hawkes
• Jordan Healy
• Bhadrajee Hewage
• Elizabeth Hobbs
• Susan Homewood
• Dee Hutchison
• Elizabeth Irvine
• Henry Jennings
• Stephanie Joyner
• Roslin Kerr
• Mohammed Khan
• Abdul Sabur Kidwai
• Abi Kingsnorth
• Larissa Kraft
• Navas Kuruva Chalil
• Jürg Lieberherr
• Sandra Liwanowska
• Patrick Lumumba Olang
• Boran lyu
• Scott Macfie
• Buchule Madikizela
• Emma Mapp
• Francesca Costanza Mascanzoni
• Emma Mason
• William McCall
• Jodie Merritt
• Nicola Miles
• Emma Mitchell
• Lenny Monaghan
• Rachel Monsey
• David Morris
• Sonja Mues
• Caitlin Murray
• Alessia Pannese
• Donna Petgrave
• Camilla Portesani
• Jonathan Privett-Mendoza
• Jean-Marc Pruit
• Jahanara Rafique
• Chandima Rathnamali
• Corinna Rayner
• Hannah Robertson
• John Ross
• Fabio Sappino
• Richard Schlag
• Benjamin Seeberger
• Dominique Simpson
• Khemendra Singh
• Philip Stenberg
• Carly Suri
• Eden Swimer
• Stefano Glenn Torrigiotti
• Catherine Venables
• Michelle Walsh
• Rebecca Wilkieson
• Karen Willis
• Matthew J Wong

---

HEADER IMAGE: Dish with scholar by a lotus pond, China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Wanli mark and period (1573–1620)

 

Applications are now invited for the Royal Historical Society’s Centenary PhD Fellowships to support postgraduate historians to complete a doctorate. Two Fellowships, of six months each, are offered for the academic year 2025-26. Each Fellowship is worth £8,500 and is held in association with the Institute of Historical Research (IHR), University of London.

The RHS Centenary Fellowships are part of a larger programme of doctoral funding overseen by the IHR, to enable holders to complete a dissertation. Applications are now invited via the Institute’s website before the closing date of 31 May 2025.

RHS Centenary Fellowships are intended as completion awards. They will be awarded to students who are engaged in doctoral research in history (broadly defined) and who will have completed at least three years of full-time or four years of part-time research on their doctoral programme (and not more than four years’ full-time or six years’ part-time) at the beginning of the academic year in which the awards will be held. Adjustments to these timings will be made for North American degrees, which are longer in duration. Fellowships will normally be tenable for six months.

These awards cannot be held in conjunction with any other substantial maintenance grant. Fellows may engage in teaching or other paid work for up to six hours per week.

A condition of the awards is that Fellows will participate actively in the academic life of the Institute. They will be required to attend and present papers at appropriate IHR seminars and to give information and help to fellow scholars working in the same field.

For more on this programme, and how to submit an application by 31 May 2025, please see the IHR page here.

Please note: the Society’s second PhD programme, the Marshall Fellowships, will not run in the academic year 2025-26.

 

 

The latest in the Society’s 2025 series of lectures was given on Friday 2 May by Professor Mark Stoyle (University of Southampton). Mark’s subject was ‘Remembering Rebellion in the Tudor South West’, a study of elite and popular retellings of a series of risings in Devon and Cornwall which took place between 1497 and 1554.

Video and audio recordings of Mark’s lecture are now available.

 

Mark’s focus was the memory and memorialisation of the most significant of these actions — an extensive and violent rising against Edward VI’s religious changes which broke out in 1549 — labelled the ‘commotion time’ by later generations and known today as the ‘Prayer Book Rebellion’. In the decades following the rebellion, the conduct of individuals and settlements in these events was used to demonstrate and assert personal and civic loyalty and piety, while depriving adversaries of these attributes.

As Mark also showed, the rebellions of the 1540s served as a temporal marker in popular memory, with ‘commotion time’ becoming a shared and commonly understood reference point to describe the recent past. More recently, they have gained new momentum, especially among Cornish political and cultural movements, as examples of historical resistance to central, state intrusion.

Our great thanks to Mark for his lecture and all who attended. Video and audio recordings of Mark’s talk — along with many recordings of previous RHS lectures — including those by Janina Ramirez, Tom Holland, Julia Laite and Corinne Fowler — are available in the Society’s Events Archive.

---

Forthcoming RHS talks and lectures

On Wednesday 21 May, the Society will be at the Cornwall Campus of the University of Exeter (Penryn, near Falmouth). The visit includes a public event at which Professor Catriona Pennell (Exeter) and Professor Lucy Noakes (Essex and President of the Royal Historical Society) will discuss ‘Cultural Memory and the Two World Wars in Britain’.

The event, which starts at 4.30pm, is open to all and will include an opportunity to meet with Lucy and fellow members of the RHS Council. All are very welcome to attend.

On Wednesday 2 July we host the Society’s 2025 Prothero Lecture which will be given by Peter Gatrell (Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Manchester) on the subject of ‘Refugee World(s): a Twentieth-Century Retrospective’. Further details of Peter’s lecture are available here and booking for the event, in person or online, is now available.

The Prothero Lecture will be followed by the Society’s annual summer party. The lecture and party are open to all and we look forward to welcoming to this event.