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Allocation of research funding is central to the Society’s work of supporting historians and historical research.

In 2023 the Society has awarded £110,085 in funding to historians through open competitions, generously assisted by partner organisations and donors. In 2023-24, the Society is continuing to develop and extend its funding programmes for historians, within and outside Higher Education, and at at all career stages.

Full details of the Society’s Research Funding programmes are available here. The Society currently invites applications for the following three schemes with closing dates of Friday 1 March 2024. For further information on each programme, eligibility and how to apply please follow the links below.

• Early Career Research Fellowships – for historians within 5 years of completing a PhD to support career-building research or activities in the post-PhD period. Awards of £2000, maximum, providing support for discrete outcomes lasting no more than 6 months. Next closing date for applications: Friday 1 March 2024.

• Open Research Support Grants – for all historians who are not postgraduate students or early career researchers (within 5 years of completing a PhD). Awards of either £500 or £1000 to support specified research activities. Next closing date for applications: Friday 1 March 2024.

• David Berry Fellowship in the History of Scotland and the Scottish People – for historians at all career stages to undertake work relating to the history of Scotland or the Scottish people worldwide. Awards of up to £2500 per round. Next closing date for applications: Friday 1 March 2024.

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Applicants for Royal Historical Society funding must be members of the Society, with several exceptions for Postgraduate grants. To find out how to become a Fellow, Associate Fellow, Member or Postgraduate Member, please see our Join Us page.

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Enquiries concerning these, and other RHS Research Funding programmes, please contact: administration@royalhistsoc.org

 

Registration is now open for this year’s ‘History and Archives in Practice’ day conference (HAP24) which takes place on Wednesday 6 March 2024 at Cardiff University.

HAP is an annual gathering of historians and archivists to explore new projects, practices and collections. The conference is run jointly by the Royal Historical Society, Institute of Historical Research and The National Archives. This year, HAP is partnering with historians and archivists at Cardiff University, where the event will be held.

Our theme for HAP24 is ‘Historical Legacies: Collecting History, Historical Collections, and Community Voices’ (Welsh language version available here). The day combines panels, interactive sessions and collection demonstrations from over 15 projects, UK-wide, involving historians and archivists working collaboratively. A provisional programme for History and Archives in Practice, 2024 will be available online soon.

HAP24 provides opportunities to reflect on archival and historical legacies — of people, places, and practice; historical, physical, and digital. Join us as we consider questions of value, loss, preservation, access and the opportunities and challenges we face as historians and archivists in preserving histories and collections.

Bursaries to attend

HAP24 is a free event and organisers are committed to making the day as accessible and inclusive as possible.

There are a limited number of bursaries, of up to £150, available to support travel (for attendees based outside Cardiff), or to help with other costs (such as childcare) to enable attendance.

If you wish to be considered for a bursary please register for the event via the ‘book now’ button above and then complete the bursary application form, by Monday 19 February 2024. Applicants for bursaries will be notified of outcomes two weeks in advance of the event.#HAP24 is an in-person event at Cardiff University.

Please note that bookings for this event will close on 25 February 2024.

 

 

 

In the modern 21st century we’ve become increasingly aware of the legacies of empire, and of how these large-scale, ambitious political constructions and projects continue to live on, at least in terms of their after-effects long after their formal structures have dissolved or have been superseded.

I wish to offer a somewhat similar perspective, on developments in a much earlier period in the early to central Middle Ages.

 

Join us at 6pm on Thursday 1 February for the next event the Society’s 2024 programme when Professor Levi Roach (University of Exeter) speaks to the Society on ‘Charting Authority after Empire: Documentary Culture and Political Legitimacy in Post-Carolingian Europe’.

What happens with a former empire breaks apart, giving rise to new kingdoms and dynasties in England, France and Germany? What did these new states draw from the former empire, and what can comparative research tell us about the importance of these legacies? And just how lasting are these early medieval legacies, and where might we see them in 21st century Europe?

Levi’s lecture takes place in-person at Mary Ward House, 5-7 Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SN and online. Booking is available for both options. We look forward to welcoming to this exploration of medieval Europe and its legacies.

 

On Tuesday 23 January, the Royal Historical Society and the German Historical Institute, London hosted the first in a new partnership in global history. The RHS / GHIL Lecture is an annual event, held each January, showcasing new research in Global History. This year we were delighted to we welcome Professor Clare Anderson (University of Leicester) to give the inaugural lecture: ‘Convicts, Creolization and Cosmopolitanism: aftermaths of penal transportation in the British Empire’.

Clare’s lecture considered the personal legacies of convict transportation in three sites and societies: Australia, the state of Penang in Malaysia, and the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean. For each, Clare is conducting research with citizens who have discovered transported convicts as ancestors through their genealogical research.

The lecture explored historians’ ability to trace the aftermath of penal transportation in the very different environments of Australia, which is archivally rich, and Penang where some 5000 transported convicts have left scant written record and legacies are now dependent on oral and material culture. Clare’s lecture concluded with a study of official and unofficial memorialisation of transported convicts, and the place of governments in shaping official presentations of the past.

Our great thanks to Clare for her lecture and also to the German Historical Institute, London, for partnering with the Society for this series, and for hosting the first in this annual programme on new work in global history.

A recording of Clare’s lecture will be available soon.

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The Society’s next lecture takes place at 6pm on Thursday 1 February when we welcome Professor Levi Roach (University of Exeter) to speak on ‘Charting Authority after Empire: Documentary Culture and Political Legitimacy in Post-Carolingian Europe’.

Levi’s lecture offers a new comparative survey of the emergence of Western European states and dynasties in the early medieval period. Far from acting independently, the kingdoms of England, France and Germany drew extensively, and collectively, on the written legacy of the Carolingian Empire in establishing new nation states.

Booking to attend the lecture at Mary Ward House, London) or online remains open, and we look forward to welcoming you to this event. All are very welcome.

 

The Royal Historical Society seeks to appoint a Secretary for Professional Engagement to join the Society’s governing Council which currently comprises a total of 19 Officers and Councillors who are trustees of the RHS.

The Secretary for Professional Engagement will sit as an Officer on Council and attend Council meetings and will take up the post at an agreed date in 2024.

The appointment is for a two-year term, with possibility of renewal up to four years, and is part of a review of the Society’s governance to focus on areas of key importance to the discipline at this time. Applicants must be Fellows of the Royal Historical Society. Applications may be made via the Society’s applications platform before the closing date of 11:59 PM, Friday 8 March 2024.

About the role

The role of Secretary for Professional Engagement is designed to develop the Society’s links with professional historians at all career stages. The Secretary will lead on the Society’s professional support of historians, primarily but not solely within UK higher education. The post holder will work closely with the President, Academic Director and CEO in order to provide strategic leadership for the Society in this sphere through the development of training events, networking opportunities, and other activities of their own design.

The RHS runs an active programme of activities for professional historians at all stages, from PhD research to later career. These include training workshops on topics relating to teaching, research, engagement with the media, academic administrative roles, as well as personal career development with a particular recent focus on the needs of historians at mid-career. The Secretary for Professional Engagement will contribute ideas for this programme, and so build on the Society’s offer to historians at all career stages and those who work outside Higher Education.

The role requires a time-commitment of up to two days per month. Owing to the Society’s charitable status, the role is unremunerated.

For further details and specifications of the role please, and how to apply, please see here.

Applications for the post of Secretary for Professional Engagement can made via the Society’s applications platform before the closing date of 11:59 PM, Friday 8 March 2024.

Informal enquiries about the role may be made to: Professor Emma Griffin (president@royalhistsoc.org)

Questions about the application process may be sent to: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

 

The Council of the Royal Historical Society is delighted to announce the appointment of Lucy Noakes as its next President from November 2024.

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. She will take up the Presidency of the Royal Historical Society in November 2024 when she succeeds the current President, Emma Griffin, who completes her term in office later this year.

Lucy will be the 36th President of the Royal Historical Society since its formation in 1868. As President, Professor Noakes will lead the Society’s work to advocate for the historical profession and to promote the value of historical knowledge and understanding, in higher education and related sectors.

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

On her election as the next President of the Royal Historical Society, Lucy Noakes said:

I am honoured and excited to be leading the Royal Historical Society as its new President from November 2024. This is a time of considerable opportunity and challenge for history and historians.

History is currently thriving in many ways: public interest in the past is unparalleled and today’s historians are working with great creativity, dedication and skill to bring their research to new audiences. Equally, history is facing unprecedented pressures, most notably in higher education where its value and contribution to society is often under-appreciated.

The Royal Historical Society is central to both these environments—championing history’s opportunities and potential while supporting and defending the discipline and profession. As President, I look forward greatly to working with the Society’s Council, its membership, and the wider historical community, to pursue these important goals.

To accompany the announcement, Lucy has written today for the RHS blog on ‘History and Memory in the 21st Century’.

 

Emma Griffin, President of the Royal Historical Society, 2020-24, said:

I am absolutely delighted to welcome Lucy as President-Elect of the Royal Historical Society and look forward to working with her in the coming months. Lucy is a brilliant historian and ideally suited to lead the Society and to develop its work as the national voice for history and historians.

With a wealth of experience in the historical society sector and in public history, Lucy fully appreciates the many ways historical research is now undertaken within and beyond higher education. I’m sure her interests and approach will be appreciated by the Society’s membership, and attract many more historians to join the Society and support its promotion of the discipline.

 

Commenting on the appointment, Jane Winters, chair of the Society’s Presidential Selection Committee, said:

Lucy has the ideal mix of expertise and experience to lead the Royal Historical Society in supporting and championing historians wherever they are found. She has a deep understanding of the challenges faced by different kinds of institution, both within and outside higher education, and an outstanding track record of working across sectors to promote and advance the discipline of history.

Lucy combines exceptional scholarship with extensive management and leadership experience, and takes a wonderfully collaborative approach to both. I’m delighted that she will be taking over as President from November 2024, to build on the work of Emma and her predecessors.

 

The Royal Historical Society is the UK’s foremost learned society for the support of history and historians. Founded in 1868, today’s Society is an international membership organisation of more than 6,000 historians working in higher education, archives, museums, publishing and broadcasting, as well as independent researchers and in community history groups.

The Society undertakes advocacy for the historical profession and promotion of the value of history; policy and research in areas relating to the discipline; a programme of public lectures and events; provision of research funding; and scholarly publishing, including its journal, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (founded in 1872).

 

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.

 

 

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce details of its 2024 events programme.

The series includes the launch of a new partnership between the Society and the German Historical Institute, London to promote research in global history. We are delighted that the inaugural RHS/GHIL Lecture will be given by Clare Anderson (Leicester) on Tuesday 23 January 2024 on the subject of ‘Convicts, Creolization and Cosmopolitanism: Aftermaths of Penal Transportation in the British Empire’. Booking for online attendance of this lecture is now available.

Clare’s lecture is followed, on Thursday 1 February, with the first RHS Lecture of 2024: ‘Charting Authority after Empire: Documentary Culture and Political Legitimacy in Post-Carolingian Europe’, with Levi Roach (Exeter). Levi’s lecture takes place at Mary Ward House, London, and online, and registration is now open.

Later RHS Lectures will be given, in May, by Julia Laite (Birkbeck) and, in September, Caroline Pennock (Sheffield). In July, we are very pleased to welcome Peter Frankopan (Oxford) to deliver the Society’s 2024 Prothero Lecture, and in November to host Janina Ramirez for the Society’s annual Public History Lecture, in association with Gresham College.

On 13 March 2024, the Society visits historians at the universities of York and York St John and jointly hosts a public lecture with Fay Bound Alberti (King’s College London). This is followed in May with a visit to Brunel University which includes a partnership lecture from Corinne Fowler (Leicester).

Other events in 2024 include the Society’s annual conference, History and Archives in Practice, which is run jointly with The National Archives and the Institute of Historical Research. Taking place on 6 March, at Cardiff University, ‘HAP24’ will consider the preservation and legacy of archive collections. And on Tuesday 20 February we’re delighted to host ‘Finding the Funny in Public History’, an evening of conversation with the broadcaster and author Greg Jenner for which in-person and online booking is now open.

Details of these events are available in the events pages of the RHS website and will be advertised via social media and the Society’s weekly mailing to members. We’ll be adding further details and new events to our 2024 programme in the new year.

 

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Listen again to Society events from 2023

Video and audio recordings of many of the Society’s events held in 2023 are also available via the RHS Events Archive.

• Sessions from 2023 include lectures by Brenda E. Stevenson (Oxford), on ‘Enslaved Black Life, Courtship and Marriage in the Antebellum South’ and John Gallagher (Leeds) on ‘Migrant Voices in the Multilingual City’.
• Panel discussions include ‘Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery: Debates, Legacies and New Directions for Research’ (June); ‘Writing and Publishing Trade History’ (with Yale University Press London, October) and ‘Black British History. Where Now, Where Next?’ (October).
• Training Workshops in 2023 include ‘Digital History and Collaborative Research: a Practitioners’ Roundtable’ (May) and ‘Scholarly Editing for Historians: An Introduction and Guide to Working with Primary Texts’ (July).

 

 

The Society’s Events Archive includes video and audio recordings of recent lectures and panel discussions hosted by the RHS. Now available to watch or listen again are recordings of the following sessions held in autumn 2023.

Further below you’ll find details of opening events in our 2024 programme which begins on 23 January with the inaugural RHS / German Historical Institute Lecture on Global History.

 

RHS Presidential Lecture, 2023 

‘European Exploration, Empires, and the Making of the Modern World’, with Emma Griffin (24 November)

 

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RHS Public History Lecture, in association with Gresham College

‘Pilgrimages, Pandemics and the Past’, with Tom Holland (7 November)

 

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RHS Panel: ‘Black British History. Where Now, Why Next?

with Hannah Elias, Kesewa John, Liam Liburd and Bill Schwarz (24 October)

 

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RHS Panel: ‘Writing and Publishing Trade History’, in association with Yale University Press (10 October)

with Rebecca Clifford, Robert Gildea, Heather McCallum, James Pullen, Simon Winder and Emma Griffin

 

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RHS Lecture: ‘Migrant Voices in the Multilingual City’, with John Gallagher (15 September)

 

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RHS Sponsored Lecture, with the Canterbury Christ Church University and the University of Kent

‘The Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved African People and the Emergence of New Relationships between State and Commerce in Restoration in England’, with William Pettigrew (11 September)

 

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What’s coming up in 2024?

 

We look forward to welcoming you to our events in 2024. In January and February we host lectures and discussions with:

• Clare Anderson on ‘Convicts, Creolization and Cosmopolitanism: aftermaths of penal transportation in the British Empire’ – the inaugural Royal Historical Society / German Historical Institute Lecture on Global History, at the GHIL and Online (5.30pm, Tuesday 23 January 2024)
• Levi Roach on ‘Charting Authority after Empire: Documentary Culture and Political Legitimacy in Post-Carolingian Europe’ – the first of 2024’s RHS Lectures, at Mary Ward House, London, and Online (6pm, Thursday 1 February 2024)
• Greg Jenner in conversation with Emma Griffin on ‘Finding the Funny in Public History’, at Mary Ward House, London, and Online (6pm, Tuesday 20 February 2024)

Further details of these lectures and talks, and how to book, are available here, along with our 2024 programme of events to which we’ll be adding in the coming months.