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The 2024 Anniversary General Meeting (AGM) of the Royal Historical Society will take place at 6pm on Friday 22 November 2024 at Mary Ward House, Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SN 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 7 November 2024. 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 in person
• To attend online 

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. 

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The Society’s AGM will be immediately followed by the 2024 RHS Presidential Lecture — ‘War and Peace: Mass Observation, Memory and the Ends of the Second World War in Britain‘ — given by Professor Lucy Noakes, who will take up the presidency of the Royal Historical Society at the AGM.

To register to attend the lecture in person (Mary Ward House, Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SN) or online, please select the correct booking link.

 

On Tuesday 5 November, the Society hosted its annual Public History Lecture, held in association with Gresham College London. This year’s lecture — ‘Why Writing Women Back into History Matters’ — was presented by the historian and broadcaster, Professor Janina Ramirez.

Janina’s lecture, which is now available to watch again, was an opportunity to rethink agency in medieval history.

As Janina argued, rediscovering remarkable historical figures such as the Birka Warrior Woman, Hildegard of Bingen, and King Jadwiga offers us a fresh perspective to understand an era often dismissed as ‘nasty, brutish, and short’.

Rather than being exceptions, the lecture revealed the considerable influence and power held by medieval women and shed light on the gradual erosion of female agency over subsequent centuries. Through their rediscovery, Janina questioned traditional historical narratives to construct more nuanced, inclusive accounts that reflect the richness, complexity and diversity of the past.

Our considerable thanks to Janina for this year’s RHS Public History lecture and also to Gresham College as co-hosts of the event.

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The Society’s Public History Lecture is held annually in November and recordings of many previous lectures are also available. Recent lecturers include Tom Holland, Kavita Puri, Ludmilla Jordanova and David Olusoga.

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About the event

The recent UK general election prompted much comment on the Labour party’s history: its patterns of electoral success (and defeat), its record in government, the significance of the 2024 result within an historical context, and the electoral geography on which it rested. This year has also marked the hundredth anniversary of Britain’s first Labour government, proving a fruitful time for public events, conferences and publications reflecting in different ways on the history of the political left.

With the panel ‘Histories of the British Political Left’, the RHS brought together five historians who have made significant interventions in the scholarship exploring that history, to discuss the state of the field, new interpretations, and recent developments in research. The conversation took place online on 23 October 2024.

Audio and video recordings of the panel event are now available.

 

Watch the event

 

Listen to the event

 

Coming soon and now available to book

Forthcoming events from the RHS include the Society’s 2024 Public History Lecture, ‘Why Writing Women Back into History Matters’, given this year by the historian and broadcaster, Janina Ramirez. Attendance of Janina’s lecture is available in person at Gresham College, London, and also online.

This is followed on Friday 22 November with the Society’s 2024 Presidential Address, given by the incoming RHS President. Lucy Noakes (University of Essex). Lucy will speak on ‘War and Peace: Mass Observation, Memory and the Ends of the Second World War in Britain’.

Booking for both events is available by following the links below:

• ‘Why Writing Women Back into History Matters’, with Janina Ramirez (6pm Tuesday 5 November 2024) 
• ‘War and Peace: Mass Observation, Memory and the Ends of the Second World War in Britain’ (6pm Friday 22 November 2024) 

 

In today’s Wonkhe — the online ‘home of the UK higher education debate’ — the Society’s President, Emma Griffin, writes on ‘The Value of History’ in UK universities.

Emma’s article outlines:

• the Society’s, and historians’, concerns about a wave of cuts and closures to departments;
• the damage being done, especially in post-92 institutions;
• the need to better appreciate the values and positives of history within UK higher education;
• and the importance of meaningful communication with prospective history undergraduates, as well as teachers and parents: to ensure that growing numbers of GCSE and A-Level history students are encouraged to carry on with the subject at university.

 

History’s many positives need to be better communicated to those presently wary of going on to undergraduate study. History’s growing popularity at GCSE and A level is very welcome. However, it’s not yet translated to an equivalent lift in undergraduate enrolments. This is clearly a vulnerable transition point, and one that can benefit from positive messaging. We need to show future undergraduates the benefits, and pleasures, of continuing with history.

By demonstrating the positives, we’ll encourage more students to pursue the subject they enjoy, confident that theirs is an informed choice, with clear rewards and opportunities for professional and personal development.

Alongside students, these are arguments to hone and put to parents, teachers, politicians and policy makers, as well as the sizeable audiences for “popular” and “public history” – so much of which starts with academic research in our universities. Such audiences remind us of history’s importance well beyond formal education.

 

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Copies of the RHS’s new briefing, ‘The Value of History in UK Higher Education and Society’, are available to download under a Creative Commons licence: (CC BY-NC 4.0)

The tables and charts within the briefing are also available for separate download and use.

 

 

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In addition, the Society’s new briefing is available in a browsable format, below:

 

 

The Royal Historical Society (RHS) today publishes its latest briefing, ‘The Value of History in UK Higher Education and Society’.

‘The Value of History’ draws on the Society’s work with historians in UK higher education during the 2020s.

The briefing highlights a growing divergence between the popularity of history—as a subject of study and public interest—and the security of historians within UK higher education. In many ways, history is in good health. It remains a major degree subject with strong student enrolment. History is likewise prominent in public life. At the same time, the Society is seeing an increasing number of history departments hit by cuts and closures. 

One purpose of this briefing is to summarise our data and analysis, based on the Society’s daily engagement with historians. This includes the results of a recent RHS survey of its members who work as academic historians in the UK. These show that the extent and impact of cuts is far greater than the Society’s previous work suggests. The survey also confirms how negative change is concentrated in departments at post-92 universities.

News of cuts in history departments makes for difficult reading. But this is far from being the full story.

History is, and remains, a major subject in UK higher education, while student enrolments for history at GCSE and A-Level are increasing significantly. For those studying history at university, the experience is positive. Having entered the labour market, and contrary to popular rhetoric, history graduates perform strongly in terms of employability and earnings.

By demonstrating these positives, we look to encourage more students to pursue the subject they enjoy, confident that theirs is an informed choice, with clear rewards and opportunities for professional and personal development. 

‘The Value of History’ also considers what we risk losing if cuts continue. Cuts are hitting hardest in history departments in post-92 universities. These departments play a distinctive and vital role in maximising the diversity, opportunity and value of history in UK higher education. As departmental opportunities shrink, we risk history becoming more concentrated in selected universities, and increasingly the preserve of students with greater mobility, wealth and family experience of higher education.

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Copies of ‘The Value of History in UK Higher Education and Society’ are available to download under a Creative Commons licence: (CC BY-NC 4.0)

The tables and charts within the briefing are also available for separate download and use.

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In addition, the Society’s new briefing is available in a browsable format, below:

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‘The Value of History’ also signals an enhanced role for the Royal Historical Society as a champion of history and historical understanding in its many manifestations. This, of course, extends well beyond higher education. Future work will therefore consider intersections between academic and public historians, the public appetite for the past, and history’s contribution to civic and national life.

This work will greatly benefit from the experience and talents of the historical community. Please get in touch if you would like to comment on specific aspects of the text and / or to propose further approaches to demonstrating the value of history: academic.director@royalhistsoc.org.

 

We are very pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s Funded Book Workshop Grants. These awards, launched in 2023, provide historians working on a second or third monograph with funds to organise and host a day workshop with upto six invited specialist readers to discuss a manuscript in detail.

The Funded Book Workshop recipients for 2024 are:

• 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’

These workshops will be held in the academic year 2024-25.

Further details of current calls for Royal Historical Society research funding (to December 2024) are available here.

 

 

We are very sorry to learn of the death of the historian, Dame Jinty Nelson, who died on 14 October. Jinty was a superb and hugely respected historian of early medieval Europe and is widely known for her publications, which include The Frankish World, 750–900 (1996), Courts, Elites and Gendered Power in the Early Middle Ages (2007), and King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne (2019).

Elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1979, Jinty was appointed the Society’s first female President in November 2000. She served for four years and her RHS Presidential Lectures explored ‘England and the Continent in the Ninth Century’ via studies of ‘Ends and Beginnings’ (2002), ‘The Vikings and Others’ (2003), ‘Rights and Rituals’ (2004) and ‘Bodies and Minds’ (2005).

Her considerable contribution to the Society, and to the historical profession, is remembered by the Society’s Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships, which are awarded annually to support innovative teaching.

Jinty’s own teaching career was wholly associated with King’s College London which she joined in 1970, becoming a Professor in 1993. Three years later she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In addition to her work for the Royal Historical Society, Jinty also served as President of the Ecclesiastical History Society and as a Vice-President of the British Academy.

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Following news of the death of Jinty Nelson, the Society has received many tributes to Jinty as a scholar, teacher and President of the RHS.

We are especially grateful to Professor Pauline Stafford for her memoir of Jinty Nelson which is now available on the Society’s blog. A close friend and colleague of  Jinty Nelson, Professor Stafford was also a Vice-President of the RHS during Jinty’s presidency.

 

At its latest meeting on 13 September 2024, the RHS Council elected 65 Fellows, 58 Associate Fellows, 52 Members and 73 Postgraduate Members, a total of 248 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, librarians, heritage specialists, history publishers, independent researchers and writers. The Society is an international community of historians and our latest intake includes Fellows from nine countries: Australia, Canada, France, Fiji, Ireland, Italy, Poland, 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, 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 50 different universities in the UK, Austria, India, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey 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 14 October 2024. 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 September 2024

• Adeyemi Akande
• Mumtaz Alam
• Fabrizio Ansani
• Gregory Baldi
• Kate Ballantyne
• Christopher Baxter
• Tim Benbow
• Ama Biney
• Susan Broomhall
• Stephen Casper
• Joanne Collins-Gonsalves
• Jessica Douthwaite
• Barbara Eichner
• Konrad Eisenbichler
• Martin  Evans
• Diarmid Finnegan
• Matthew Firth
• Laura Flannigan
• Ann-Marie Foster
• Darragh Gannon
• Ian Garner
• Charles Glass
• Denes  Harai
• Robert Hornsby
• Geraint Hughes
• Catherine Kelly
• Stephen Kelly
• Jonathan Kennedy
• Oren Kessler
• Rosie Knight
• Wai Lau
• Charles Lee
• Julian Lindley-French
• Carol Ann Lloyd
• Anthony Lodge
• Jamie Macpherson
• Simone Maghenzani
• Ambreena Manji
• Thomas Mcsweeney
• Laura Miles
• Michelle Moffat
• Giustina Monti
• Ubaldo Morozzi
• Janice  Norwood
• Lewis Owens
• Michael Peppiatt
• Justin Pigott
• Tammy M. Proctor
• Iain Quinn
• Bruce Ragsdale
• Elsa Richardson
• Helen Roche
• Paul Rouse
• Alex Rowell
• George Severs
• Seth Stadel
• Sarah Street
• Giulio Taccetti
• Vincent Trott
• Elizabeth Tunstall
• Livia Visser-Fuchs
• Don Watson
• Thomas Williams
• Jon Winder
• Lydia Zeldenrust

New Associate Fellows, elected September 2024

• Brigid Allen
• Dennis Ashara
• Laura Bartoli
• Luis Fernando Bernardi Junqueira
• Daniel  Boucher
• Sumner Braund
• David Brown
• Rachel Bynoth
• Conor Byrne
• Yvette Campbell
• Mollie Carlyle
• Chun Kei Chow
• Amelia Clegg
• Kate Clements
• Michelle Craig
• Ruairi Cullen
• Matthew Day
• Büşra Dede
• Juliette Desportes
• Liz Egan
• Charlotte Gauthier
• Kelsey Granger
• María Grove-Gordillo
• Adela Halo
• Claire Hayward
• Ciara Henderson
• Simon Sai-hau Ho
• Gillian Jack
• André Jockyman Roithmann
• Megan Kelleher
• Neha Khetrapal
• Wendy Lennon
• Qiunan Li
• Ziang Liu
• Yuet Keung Lo
• Maksymilian Loth-Hill
• Gillian  Macdonald
• James  Mackay
• Richard Marks
• Consuelo Martino
• Clare Maudling
• Stuart McBratney
• Harrie Neal
• William Parkin
• Joana Paulino
• Emmanouil Peponas
• Autumn Quezada-Grant
• Chris Riley
• Robert Scott
• Angela Skitt
• Victoria Smith
• Patrick Stickland
• Rose Teanby
• Jacob Thomas-Llewellyn
• Jacob Ware
• Rebecca Watterson
• Christopher Whittell
• Elisabeth Yang
• Jocelyn Zimmerman

New Members, elected September 2024

• Naeera Ali
• Bobby Phe Amis
• Samuel Arrowsmith
• Grace Ayodeji
• Luke Barker
• Mousumi Biswas
• Alessandro Borca
• Henrietta Butler
• Archie  Butler-Gallie
• C. Chandrasekar
• Eddie Chan
• Ariana  Chan
• Charlton Cheung
• Phillip Clarke
• Richard Deakin
• Lawrence Dent
• Georgina Elders
• Stephen Fletcher
• Victoria Friedrich
• Paukhenkhup Guite
• Kristian Hasty
• Craig Humphries
• Dan Hunter
• Nicholas James
• Eldar Knar
• Ho Him Lai
• Alexis Lansbury
• Bernard Lawrence
• Sandra Leong
• Natalie Lewis
• Andrew Marris
• Colin McEvoy
• Tejaswi Mehta
• Richard Moon
• Humayra Naimah
• Lakshme Pavithraa
• Matteo Povolo
• Xue Qi
• Matthew Riley
• Guillermo German Rios Sancho
• Janet Rogan
• Kevin Schehr
• Arthur Sham
• Bernard Sharp
• Sofia Singh
• Jane Smith
• Tony Sullivan
• Louis Upton
• Gide Van Cappel
• Ulrich Wittlief
• Michael Wright
• David Yates

New Postgraduate Members, elected September 2024

• Houda Al-Kateb
• Olivia Allanson-Huston
• Sagnik Bhattacharya
• Emily Bowen
• Elizabeth Bowsher
• Celal Canbirdi
• Ananyo Chakraborty
• Aristide Pierre Chryssoulis
• Daniel  Costa
• Isaac Crichlow
• Matthew Cunneen
• Sophie Curtis
• Jeanne Michelle Datiles
• Sean Derrick
• Yunus Dogan
• Emily Ellis
• Jennifer Gallagher
• Ella Siobhan Gaskell
• Jessi Gilchrist
• Ashwin Gohil
• Mara Gold
• Silvia Gómez Senovilla
• Anya Griffiths
• Thomas Griffiths
• Ryan Hampton
• Rhys Harry
• Anne-Marie Harvatt
• Ellen Hausner
• Euan Healey
• Sheida Heydarishovir
• Tina Holt
• Esther  Howard Cuadros
• Jim Hulbert
• Julie Hurst-Whitehouse
• Tirivashe Jele
• Jay Jose
• Ewan Keddie-Hearns
• Serena Lee
• Sue Lemos
• Peilin Li
• Lisa Mapley
• Marvin Münsch
• Alice Naylor
• Chiedozie Obia
• Nicholas Ong
• Gabriel Opare
• Teleri Owen
• Beth Price
• Joseph Radcliffe
• Sijie Ren
• Lis Riveros
• Tammie Russell
• Amritash Sankhyan
• Steve Sawbridge
• Megan Schlanker
• Richard Senior
• Connie Sjodin
• Charlie Spragg
• Peter Stephenson
• Adele Stolovitz
• Shabdita Tiwari
• Tom Trafford
• Joe Traynor
• Apeike Umolu
• Francis van Berkel
• Yasmin Vicente
• Doris Vickers
• Tom Vickery
• Ryan Hearn
• Ben McGeiver-Carney
• Eamonn Welch
• Jo Wheeler
• Qingrou Zhao

 

HEADER IMAGE: ‘Foreshortening of a Library’, Carlo Galli Bibiena Italian, 1728–78, Metropolitan Museum of art, New York, public domain

 

The Royal Historical Society seeks to appoint a Co-Editor for its academic journal, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, published by Cambridge University Press.

The new Co-Editor will work alongside Dr Jan Machielsen (Cardiff University) who has edited the journal since January 2024. The new appointment will take effect from 1 January 2025 or as soon as possible thereafter. Following an initial probationary period, the appointment will run for a minimum of two years (to January 2027) with the option to extend for a further two years (January 2029).

Applicants for this role must be Fellows of the Royal Historical Society.

This is an exciting phase for the journal as we extend its scale and scope. The new Co-Editor will support, and work closely with the current Editor, Dr Machielsen, in developing the journal’s scope and scale, and further enhancing its profile and intellectual reputation.

We are looking for a Co-Editor with research expertise that complements that of Dr Machielsen, a historian of early modern Europe, and befits a wide-ranging generalist journal. Applications from those working in the modern period and/or non-European or world history are especially welcome. Given the nature of this role, the capacity for effective collaborative working is another essential requirement.

In addition to experience of academic editorial work, broadly defined, the successful candidate will have genuine curiosity and enthusiasm for the broad, interdisciplinary scope of the journal and creative, imaginative and sustainable ideas for its further development.

Further details of this role, including specifications and how to apply, are available here.

The deadline for applications, via the RHS Applications Portal, is 11:59PM, Friday 22 November 2024.

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About the journal

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society is the flagship journal of the Society. It has been publishing the highest quality scholarship in history for over 150 years.

Today’s journal, published by Cambridge University Press, offers a wide range of research articles and commentaries on historical approaches, practice and debate. In addition to traditional 10-12,000 word research articles, Transactions also welcomes shorter, innovative commentary articles. In 2023, we introduced the ‘Common Room’ — a section of the journal dedicated to commentaries and think pieces by academic historians and historical practitioners.

All articles are published on CUP’s FirstView and in print. From August 2024, articles accepted for publication in Transactions automatically appear Open Access, with no charge to the author, ensuring the widest possible circulation and readership for new work.

The journal invites articles from authors at every career stage. We also publish, and invite, articles and commentaries from historians working outside Higher Education in related sectors such as heritage.

The journal’s editorial team provides prompt responses and peer review. Articles are published with Cambridge University Press, online via CUP’s FirstView, and in an annual print volume. The Editors are supported in their work by the journal’s UK Editorial and International Advisory boards. Further support is provided by the Office of the Royal Historical Society and the journal’s publisher, Cambridge University Press.

 

From October 2024, Matthew Kerry’s monograph, Unite, Proletarian Brothers! Radicalism and Revolution in the Spanish Second Republic, will be available in a Spanish language edition. Matthew’s volume was published, in 2020, as part of the Society’s New Historical Perspectives book series for early career historians.

The Spanish language edition, Un Pueblo Revolucionado. El Octubre de 1934 y la Segunda República en Asturias, will appear with Comares Editorial.

 

 

This is the first New Historical Perspectives title to receive a foreign language translation.

Matthew’s is one of 21 current and forthcoming books in the NHP series, which is published in association with the Institute of Historical Research and University of London Press. The series comprises monographs and edited collections by early career historians within 10 years of a PhD at a UK or Irish university. All titles are published Open Access and in paperback print with all OA charges covered by the Society, the IHR, the University Press, and our partner the Economic History Society.

All NHP monograph authors receive mentoring and a workshop with specialist readers to develop their manuscript before its submission.

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Full details of and access to current NHP titles is available via the University of London Press. The next title to appear in the series (November 2024) is Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z, edited by Maria Cannon and Laura Tisdall.

For further details of New Historical Perspectives, and how to submit a proposal, please see here.