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At its latest meeting on 24 November 2023, the RHS Council elected 57 Fellows, 42 Associate Fellows, 50 Members and 106 Postgraduate Members, a total of 255 people newly associated with the Society, from today.

The majority of the new Fellows hold academic appointments at universities, specialising in a very wide range of fields; but also include museum curators, archivists, heritage consultants, and independent researchers and writers. The Society is an international community of historians and our latest intake includes Fellows from ten countries: Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Israel, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and 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, 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 medicine – together with independent and community historians and genealogists.

Our new Postgraduate Members are studying for higher degrees in History, or related subjects, at 53 different universities in the UK, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and the United States.

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 25 March 2024. Further details on RHS Fellowship and Membership categories (Fellow, Associate Fellow, Member and Postgraduate Member); benefits of membership; deadlines for applications throughout 2024; and how to apply, are available here.

New Fellows, elected November 2023

• Rowena Abdul Razak
• Carol Atack
• Victoria Bateman
• Susanna Berger
• Stephen Bogle
• Andrew Braddock
• Brian Brewer
• Cecilia Brioni
• Philip Butterworth
• Anna Cant
• Ian Castle
• Michael Charney
• Salvatore Ciriacono
• Leah Clark
• Ben Clements
• Charalambos Dendrinos
• Leslie Dodd
• Joshua Ehrlich
• Beñat Elortza Larrea
• Sarah Finley
• Ellinor Forster
• Rosemary Golding
• Dannelle Gutarra Cordero
• Louise Hide
• John Jenkins
• Daniel Jordan
• Sarah Kirby
• Thoralf Klein
• Chris Laoutaris
• Martina Mampieri
• Joanna Martin
• Annemarie McAllister
• Alexandra Milanova
• Christopher Minty
• James Mulholland
• Leonard Neidorf
• Niamh NicGhabhann
• Julia Nicholls
• Brian O’Sullivan
• Fiona Palmer
• Eve Patten
• Nicola Ann Hero Pickering
• Linsey Robb
• John Rumsby
• Giusi Russo
• Alexandra Sapoznik
• Benjamin Savill
• Andrew Seaton
• Yifan Shi
• Sebastian Sobecki
• Tarangini Sriraman
• Kate Stevens
• Margot Tudor
• Lucas Villegas-Aristizabal
• Kevin Weddle
• Christopher Wiley
• Gareth Williams

New Associate Fellows, elected November 2023

• Ann-Marie Akehurst
• Molly Avery
• Shaona Barik
• Elizabeth Barnes
• Matthew Bayly
• Stuart Booker
• Fiona Bowler
• Jack Bowman
• Natalie Butler
• Samuel Cardwell
• Michelle Castelletti
• Melchisedek Chetima
• Jennifer Chochinov
• Kelly Clarke-Neish
• Mark Czellér
• Lisa Di Crescenzo
• Sally Dixon-Smith
• Iain Flood
• Andrew Frampton
• Elizabeth Griffiths
• Tom Kelsey
• Struan Kennedy
• Sam Antony Kocheri Clement
• Paul Le Messurier
• Maelle Le Roux
• Fergal Leonard
• Harry Lewis
• Cheng Li
• Richard Loutzenheiser
• Timothy Maton
• Rhianne Morgan
• Danny Pucknell
• Tom Roberts
• Martin Robson
• John Sawkins
• Kathryn Simpson
• Annie Skinner
• Ellen Smith
• Miloš Todorović
• Jonathan Triffitt
• Emily Webb
• Ksenia Wesolowska

New Members, elected November 2023

• Denise Awoonor-Renner
• Kathleen Bascon
• Matthew Brook
• Christopher Brown
• Eric Buchmann
• David Cardillo
• Andrew Carpenter
• Hanfu Chen
• Arda Ciftci
• Coleen Dessalle
• Lara Dieudonné
• Jack Edson
• Liza Fitzgerald
• Elizabeth Geeves
• Clive Gilham
• Alisa Gupwell
• Sam Harper-Coulson
• Zachary Hawson
• Mark Hayball
• Tudor Hicks
• Roger Hill
• Mary Jiyani
• George Jones
• Sakir Laskar
• Amanda Lickrish
• Charles Littlewood
• Jason Loch
• Wilson Maguwah
• Pascoe Mitchelmore
• Kiwon Nam
• Alex O’Connor
• Nipon Panging
• Siddhant Patnaik
• Alexander Pocklington
• Lander Rupprecht
• Himasweeta Sarma
• Dhruv Sarup
• Christopher Skeet
• Elizabeth Smith
• Georgina Spriddell
• Barrie Taylor-Fraser
• Li Xuan Teo
• Dan Tessadri
• Christopher Thomas
• Jake Thomas
• Daniel Townend
• Escola Van Veen
• Nimai Verma
• Sabrina Wiggins
• Jonathan Woodcock

New Postgraduate Members, elected November 2023

• Laura Aitken-Burt
• Chloe Akers
• Mathilde Alain
• Pavel Alam
• Jose Maria Alvarez Hernandez
• Aleksa Andrejevic
• Selin Arican
• David Austen
• Aaron Marcel Beaudin
• Kathryn Berry
• Arkadeb Bhattacharya
• Anik Biswas
• Ryan Blank
• Victoria Broughton
• Chris Caden
• Chris Campbell
• Julie Chamberlain
• Tonghao Chen
• Benjamin Coleman
• Georgina Crespi
• Jojo Dickinson
• Odysseas Digbassanis
• Rebecca Doherty
• Doris Duhennois
• Charlotte Eaton
• Regan Ebsworth
• Florence Eccleston
• Peter Edwards
• Stephen Evans
• Luke Farrell
• Theo Fawcett
• Catherine Finnie
• Madeleine Foote
• Josh Fordham
• Alexandra Forsyth
• Jessica Gallagher
• Elizabeth Garner
• Anamitra Ghosh
• Christos Giannatos
• Ed Green
• Tristan Grove
• Candice Hague
• Anna Harrington
• Laura Hawthorn
• Emily Hayes
• Elysia Louise Heitmar
• Ciara Hervas
• Ellie Hibbert
• Minke Hijmans
• Rebekah Hodge
• Claire Holliss
• Paul Hutchinson
• Thomas Hendrik Kaal
• Khushi Kesari
• Mahima Khan
• Aryan Khare
• Charlie Knight
• Debra Kontowtt
• Amit Kumar
• Leong Yung Kung
• Tewa Lascelles
• Hasaam Latif
• Sarah Lawson-Schalles
• Beatrice Leeming
• Chengkai Lian
• Yanyi Liu
• Jessica Love
• Jagyoseni Mandal
• Maria Teresa Marangoni
• Mick McTiernan
• Claudia Isabelle Montero
• Gwenffrewi Morgan
• Rebecca Mowbray
• Maeghan O’Conner
• Harry O’Neill
• Jennifer Phillips
• Dushlani Ishara Pilanage
• Alexandra Plane
• Josh Racey
• Sydney Radford
• Eva Ressel
• Hannah Reynolds
• Anna Richards
• Jude Rowley
• Saukarya Samad
• Simon Scruton
• Manaswini Sen
• Guting Shen
• Shamim Shivaie
• Sarah Stanley-Smith
• Andrew Steels
• Rebecca Stoneham
• Melinda Susanto
• Wyatt Switzer
• Qiqing Tan
• Ransford Tei
• Kristen Thomas-McGill
• Eliane Thoma-Stemmet
• Yixin Tian
• Edmund van der Molen
• Anais Walsdorf
• Lauren Warner-Treloar
• Andrew White
• Elizabeth Wilkinson
• Sebastian Willis
• Mhairi Winfield

 

HEADER IMAGE: ‘Winterlandschap met schaatsers’, Hendrick Avercamp, ca. 1608 (detail), Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, public domain.

 

 

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the inaugural David Berry Fellowship in Scottish History and the History of the Scottish People.

Launched in December 2023, the David Berry Fellowship provides an annual award of up to £2,500 to undertake research on the history of Scotland and the Scottish people worldwide.

Invitations are now invited for the inaugural David Berry Fellowship prior to the closing date of 1 March 2024. For more on the Fellowship, eligibility, and how to apply, please see here.

The Fellowship is a new award drawing on the David Berry Fund, donated to the Society in 1929 and used, until 2022, to support the David Berry Prize in Scottish History. The change to a Fellowship from 2024 is in line with the Society’s strategic aims of using available funds to support new research and activity by historians.

The David Berry Fellowship may be used to undertake research, and to cover the costs of research, into an aspect of the history of Scotland and / or the history of the Scottish people within the United Kingdom or worldwide, within 12 months of 1 March 2024.

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What is covered by the Fellowship?

The David Berry Fellowship is intended to enable and facilitate research that would not otherwise take place. Sources of funding may include, but are not limited to:

• Travel to an archive or research site
• Accommodation while researching away from home
• Entrance charges for archives, or similar, where required
• Fees for obtaining or posting research materials (e.g. copying / scanning)
• Please note: the Fellowship may not be used to pay a third party to undertake research or to support the publication of a final manuscript

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Other current calls for RHS research funding

In addition to the David Berry Fellowship, applications for the following grants are now open with deadlines marked below:

• RHS Workshop Grants – awards of £1000 for historians to hold day-long events to pursue a wide range of activities and projects, including but not limited to research. Next closing date for applications: Friday 19 January 2024.
• 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.

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HEADER IMAGES: (left); William Duguid, Scottish textile importer based in Boston (1773), by Prince Demah Barnes; (right) ‘Janet Law’, by Sir Henry Raeburn, both Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, public domain.

 

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the availability of its 2023 Annual Newsletter and the Trustees Annual Report and Audited Financial Statements, covering the activities of the Society between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023. Both were published in the week of the Society’s AGM, held at Mary Ward House, London, on Friday 24 November.

The Trustees Annual Report provides a review of the activities of the Society in its most recent full financial year, together with plans for future work by the Society, and the financial statements to 30 June 2023.

Print copies of the Society’s Annual Newsletter (dated November 2023) have now been sent to all Fellows and Members of the Society in the UK and overseas.

This year’s Newsletter includes the annual President’s Letter; articles on RHS Education and Research Policy from the Society’s newly appointed Secretaries for Education and Research Policy, Adam Budd and Barbara Bombi; a guide to the Society’s new Members Directory which will launch in early 2024; introductions to the research of this year’s RHS Centenary and Marshall Fellows; and a reflection on the work of our friend and colleague, the historian Arthur Burns (1963-2023).

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Other ways to keep in touch: in addition to the Trustees Annual Report and Annual Newsletter, the Society sends out a weekly News Circular to all Fellows and Members (this example dated 23 November 2023) informing them of current and forthcoming news and events, which are also featured on this website. You can also follow updates via RHS News, social media @RoyalHistSoc, and the blog, Historical Transactions.

 

 

We are, sadly, all too familiar with news of cuts within UK History departments. The Royal Historical Society meets regularly with historians facing course closures and redundancies. The Society also speaks out for individual departments and the sector as a whole.

What we learned last week from Oxford Brookes University goes far beyond the cases previously encountered. In terms of extent, rapidity and impact, the cuts and job losses proposed at Oxford Brookes are remarkably severe. History is not alone. Recent coverage has highlighted the university’s plan to close its Music programme—a decision which also affects cultural historians in that department. Cuts are similarly proposed for English, Film, Anthropology and Architecture.

For History the proposal is shocking. All six of the department’s professors are at risk of redundancy. Four will be required to leave either ‘voluntarily’ in January or through compulsory redundancy by Spring 2024. If carried through, this would reduce the number of front-line teaching staff to as low as eight FTE. This is a long way from the mid 2010s when Brookes History was a significant force of c. 30 historians with an average annual intake of more than 100 undergraduates across single and joint honours degrees.

The impact of these cuts will be considerable. First and foremost are those whose positions are now at risk. But the effects go much further. Redundancies, mid-way through the year, will severely deplete the department’s teaching capacity; they will damage students’ learning experience—most notably for those in their final year preparing dissertations; and will mean much heavier teaching loads for colleagues who remain.

Furthermore, cuts of this focus and severity look set to end a culture of historical research that’s previously thrived at Oxford Brookes. This is a research group widely admired and respected across the profession, and one that has performed well in recent research assessments. What, we have to ask, has happened to the QR funding earned by Brookes historians if it has not gone to support these historians? How does the university intend to use this funding in future if the department is reduced to a much lower level of staffing?

It is especially alarming that erosion of research culture appears to be the university’s intention. What makes the Oxford Brookes proposal so concerning is not the common pretence that all will be well despite fewer resources; rather that the purpose of Brookes History and humanities is changing fundamentally to the detriment of research. To jettison a respected research culture will, we fear, damage the wider university through loss of reputation, research income and academic partnerships.

Why is this happening? Colleagues highlight recent fluctuations in student numbers in History. As the Society reported in June 2023, lifting the cap on student numbers in 2015 has created an environment of feast and famine, in which departments are either overwhelmed by or deprived of students. Neither outcome can support long-term planning or the highest-quality teaching and research. Even so, the situation at Brookes has recently stabilised with admissions for History on the rise.

The extent and rapidity of cuts at Oxford Brookes clearly go far beyond individual departments. They speak to wider difficulties faced by the university. What is unacceptable is those now paying the price are skilled, successful historians and their students—alongside those in other humanities departments facing cuts or closure.

The Society is communicating these concerns to the Vice Chancellor and Governors of Oxford Brookes in the strongest terms. The Society’s experience is that departments of fewer than 10 FTE struggle and seldom prove viable. This cannot be allowed to happen at Oxford Brookes either by design or neglect. We urge the university to pause its current proposals and timetable to allow for a more considered review of History’s future at Brookes—for the benefits of students, all staff, and the discipline.

The President, Officers and Councillors of the Royal Historical Society

 

On Friday 24 November the Royal Historical Society held its Anniversary General Meeting (AGM) at Mary Ward House, London. The AGM was followed by the 2023 Presidential Lecture, ‘European Exploration, Empires, and the Making of the Modern World’, given by the Society’s President, Professor Emma Griffin (Queen Mary University of London).

The AGM saw the appointment of following to the Society’s governing Council: Professor Clare Griffiths (Cardiff) as Vice President; Dr John Law as Treasurer; Professor Barbara Bombi (Kent) as Secretary for Research; Professors Mark Knights (Warwick) and Iftikhar Malik (Bath Spa University) as members of Council.

The meeting also noted the departure from the RHS Council of the following, on completion of their terms of office: Professor Jonathan Morris (Hertfordshire) as Vice-President (Research Policy); Professor Jon Stobart (Manchester Metropolitan) as Honorary Treasurer; Professor Julian Wright (Northumbria) as Secretary for Professional Engagement; and Professor Thomas Otte (UEA) as a member of Council.

In her 2023 Presidential Lecture, Professor Griffin considered British industrialisation in global and European perspective. The lecture compared approaches to innovation and the handling of raw materials, sourced in colonial territories, in Britain and France, tracing the origins of English entrepreneurialism to the early modern period.

Our thanks to all those who attended the event in person and online. A video and audio recording of the lecture will be made available shortly.

 

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the next call for its RHS Workshop Grants for projects taking place in 2024. This scheme provides funding of £1,000 per Grant to enable historians to undertake activities, broadly defined, to pursue historical research, study and discussion. In this round, the Society will make up to six awards for Workshops held in 2024.

This is the second round of RHS Workshops Grants; further details of the four projects awarded funding in 2023 are listed below.

Applications are now invited via the Society’s online application portal, before the closing date: 23:59 on Friday 19 January 2024.

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About the Call

RHS Workshop Grants enable historians to come together to pursue projects of shared interest. Projects are purposefully and broadly defined, and may focus not only on academic research but also on a wider range of activities relating to historical work. These may include but are not limited to:  

• discussion of a research topic or project by collaborators;  
• evaluation of historical methodologies, theories or practice; 
• workshopping and manuscript review of a proposed edited collection; 
• beginning and testing a research idea, leading to a future project;  
• piloting work relating to the teaching, research or the communication of history; 
• planning and writing a funding proposal;  
• undertaking networking and building of academic communities; 
• activities that combine, where appropriate, historians from a range of professional and other backgrounds, including higher education, related sectors of the historical professional, and community history groups. 
• Workshops may be open to an audience or closed to invited attendees according to the organisers’ preference.

The Society is particularly keen to support activities for which alternative sources of funding are very limited, or do not exist. The Society seeks to provide grants to those in greatest need of funding, where options for institutional support are minimal or not available.  

Each Workshop receives £1,000 from the Royal Historical Society to cover attendance and the costs of a day meeting. In this round the Society looks to provide up to six projects with Grant funding.

Workshops will be supported by the Royal Historical Society, with updates on outcomes reported via the RHS blog and social media. Projects leading to publishable work are warmly encouraged to submit content to the Society’s journal, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, for consideration.

Applicants are welcome to consider hosting Workshops at the Society’s offices at University College London, if desirable.

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Eligibility

The Society looks to award up to six Grants to projects in this latest round. Eligible applications will be for projects that: 

• have applicants / lead organisers who are current members of the Society. For more on how to join the Society, please see here;
• request funds to support travel, venue hire, hospitality and overnight accommodation when required, as well as travel bursaries for public events; grants will not be awarded to support paid work; 
• may include participants travelling from Europe in line with the Society’s carbon policy; attendance by participants from further afield will not be supported by the grant; 
• remain in contact with the Society before and after the Workshop and agree to contribute an article on their project to the RHS blog, where appropriate. 

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How to apply

If you have an idea for a workshop and would like to submit a proposal, please provide a 750-1,000 word statement. This should outline:

• the academic focus of the Workshop and the topic / activity under consideration
• the purpose and proposed outcome from the Workshop
• costings for holding a one-day event
• the location of the proposed Workshop, and whether this may be the RHS Office at University College London
• the lead organiser(s) and proposed participants who would be involved in the Workshop
• the proposed date of the Workshop, to be held in 2024

Proposals should be submitted via the Society’s online application system by the deadline of 23:59 on Friday 19 January 2024.

 

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Recipients of RHS Workshops Grants, 2023

The following four projects were awarded funding in the first round of Workshops held in 2023:

• ‘Early Modern Error’ — lead organiser: Alice Leonard (Coventry)
• ‘Women and Plantations: New Directions in Tudor and Stuart Colonial History’ — lead organiser: Lauren Working (York)
• ‘Beyond the ‘Good’ / ’Bad’ Migrant Dichotomy: ways forward for early modern and contemporary history’ — lead organiser: Kathleen Commons (Sheffield)
• ‘Unboxing the Family Archive: New Approaches to Intergenerational Collections’ — lead organiser: Imogen Peck (Birmingham)

 

We are very pleased to announce publication of the latest volume in the Society’s Camden Series of primary scholarly editions: The Last Days of English Tangier. The Out-Letter Book of Governor Percy Kirke, 1681–1683, edited by John Childs (Fifth Series, Volume 66 ,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.

The volume contains 152 official letters mostly addressed to the Tangier Committee, the subcommittee of the Privy Council responsible for Tangerine affairs, and Sir Leoline Jenkins, Secretary of State for the South. 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.

The Last Days of English Tangier. The Out-Letter Book of Governor Percy Kirke, 1681–1683 is edited by John Childs, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Leeds.

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The Last Days of English Tangier. The Out-Letter Book of Governor Percy Kirke, 1681–1683 is available online and in hardback print. Fellows and Members of the Society have online access to this latest volume, and all 400 Camden volumes of primary sources, dating from 1838 to 2023.

RHS Fellows and Members may also purchase The Last Days of English Tangier in hardback print at a discounted rate of £16 per volume. To order a copy, please contact: sabiqah.zaidi@royalhistsoc.org, marking your email ‘Camden vol. 66’.

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About the RHS 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 a specialist historian who provides an expert introduction and commentary. Today the Society publishes two new Camden volumes each year in association with Cambridge University Press. You’ll find details of recent volumes below.

The next volume in the series is: An Australian at Edwardian Oxford: Allen Leeper’s Letters Home 1908–12, edited by David Hayton (June 2024).

If you’d like to learn more about the Camden Series, and how you can propose a new edition, please see our recent panel event ‘Scholarly Editing for Historians’ (July 2023), hosted by the Series Editors, Richard Gaunt and Siobhan Talbott.

 

The 2023 Anniversary General Meeting (AGM) of the Royal Historical Society will take place at 6pm on Friday 24 November 2023 at Mary Ward House and will also be streamed online. 

All elected Fellows and Members of the Society are welcome to attend, however in line with the Society’s By-Laws, only Fellows of the Society may vote upon resolutions put before them. Fellows will receive a direct email with details of how to cast their votes on 8 November 2023. Copies of the Agenda and papers are available here. 

All those wishing to attend must pre-register via the below links. Please note that space at Mary Ward House is limited, therefore if your registration to attend in person is unsuccessful, you will be moved onto the online registration list, and will receive a notification to that effect.  

• To attend online [in-person attendance at the venue is now fully booked]

Fellows who have not received their email with voting details are asked to write to: governance@royalhistsoc.org in the first instance. Please mark your email ‘AGM’. We also encourage you to check your spam/junk folder for this email in advance of contacting the Society. 

The Society’s AGM will be immediately followed by the 2023 RHS Presidential Lecture — ‘European Exploration, Empires, and the Making of the Modern World’ — given by Professor Emma Griffin, President of the Royal Historical Society. Registration to attend the lecture online is still available.

 

 

On Tuesday 7 November, Tom Holland gave the 2023 RHS Public History Lecture, in association with Gresham College. Tom’s lecture — Pilgrimages, Pandemics and the Past’ — explored the experience of walking across London during the Covid pandemic of 2020. How, Tom asks, might this experience inform historians to better appreciate and understand the perspectives and expectations of those who undertook pilgrimages in the past?

Our thanks to Tom for his excellent lecture; to Gresham College for hosting the event; and to all those who attended the event in person or online.

Tom’s lecture is now available to watch via the Gresham College website.

 

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the appointment and election of four new members to its governing Council. All four will take up their posts following the Society’s AGM held on 24 November 2023. Their appointments follow open calls, earlier this year, for the new post of Vice President and that of Treasurer; and the recent election of two new Councillors from the Society’s Fellowship.

As Treasurer, Dr John Law will replace Professor Jon Stobart, who steps down in November after his four-year term. As Councillors Professor Mark Knights and Professor Iftikhar Malik replace Professor Barbara Bombi and Professor Thomas Otte who also end their four-year terms in November. From November, Barbara Bombi takes on the post of RHS Secretary for Research and Chair of its Research Policy Committee, replacing Professor Jonathan Morris who steps down after five years in this role.

 

Professor Clare Griffiths (Cardiff University), 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. 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 Michael John Law, Treasurer of the Royal Historical Society

 

John Law was, until his retirement, a Research Fellow in History at the University of Westminster. He joined the academic world later than is usual, completing his PhD when he was 54 years old. John’s work considers the experience of modernity in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. He is the author of several academic books. His latest, A World Away, was published by McGill Queen’s University Press in 2022, and examines the impact of holiday package tours on the people of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. John was a council member and trustee at the University of Sussex from 2011 to 2017.

Prior to academia, John was a partner at PwC and an executive at IBM. In these roles, he provided consulting advice to the world’s largest financial institutions. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant.

 

Professor Mark Knights (University of Warwick), RHS Councillor

 

Mark Knights is Professor of History at the University of Warwick. 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 Iftikhar H. Malik (Bath Spa University), RHS Councillor

 

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).