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The Royal Historical Society is delighted to award its latest round of Masters’ Scholarships to the following eight students. Each student is now beginning a Masters’ degree in History for the academic year 2024-25:

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

The Masters’ Scholarship programme provides financial support to students from groups currently underrepresented in academic History. Each Scholarship is worth £5000.

The Society is very grateful to the Past & Present Society and the Scouloudi Foundation for their generous support of this year’s awards.

The scheme, established in 2022, seeks to actively address underrepresentation and encourage Black and Asian students to consider academic research in History. By supporting Masters’ students the programme focuses on a key early stage in the academic training of future researchers. With these Scholarships, the Society seeks to support students who are without the financial means to study for a Masters’ in History. By doing so, we hope to improve the educational experience of early career historians engaged in a further degree.

We will be keeping in touch with this year’s recipients as their studies progress and wish them well.

Supporting Masters’ Scholarships: future rounds

The Society seeks to offer as many Scholarships as we can to talented eligible early career historians.

If you or your organisation would like to help us support additional Masters’ Scholarships in future rounds, please email president@royalhistsoc.org to discuss options with the Society’s President, Professor Emma Griffin.

 

 

Each year the Royal Historical Society (RHS) organises visits to history departments at UK universities. Visits are an opportunity for historians and RHS Council members to discuss the work of a department/School as well as wider disciplinary matters, and to conclude the event with a public lecture.

The Society now invites applications from colleagues in UK history departments to host a collaborative meeting and lecture in 2025. The closing date for submissions is Friday 29 November 2024.

If you would like to host a Visit in 2025, please submit your request via the Society’s online applications portal.

About RHS Visits

The Society’s Visits are opportunities for history departments to come together with RHS Council members and (where feasible and/or desired) with other history departments in the region. They offer the opportunity for conversation on matters relating to the discipline and profession, as well as to host a public lecture with an external speaker chosen (usually) by the host department.

Visits enable the RHS President and councillors to learn more about a particular department, and how the Society can best support historians at this time. Visits also provide an opportunity for the historians of a university, across all career stages and departments, to meet together outside their usual institutional frameworks. They offer the potential for historians working across several departments and/or institutions to come together to discuss our shared interests. Visits may also comprise meetings between the Society’s Council and university senior managers, if welcome.

Visits include time for informal discussions with colleagues and RHS representatives and conclude with an early evening lecture hosted by the department and open to all. Speakers are usually chosen by members of the department. In turn, the Society will pay for the speaker’s travel and accommodation (if required). The RHS will also make a contribution towards a closing dinner for the speaker and members of the department.

Applying to host a Visit in 2025

Applications to host a Visit in 2025 are now welcome. We invite applications from individual departments; from groups of departments in regions with several universities; as well as from smaller cohorts of historians working outside a formal department. Visits involving more than one department are good opportunities to reconnect with or meet new colleagues, and to discuss teaching and research in regional contexts.

Visits are usually held in the spring and autumn. There are no fixed dates and the Society will work with a department to find the best time for a session. Recent visits in 2023-24 have been to the universities of Edge Hill, Northampton, Kent and Canterbury Christ Church, the Highlands & Islands, Hertfordshire, York and York St John, and Brunel.

If you would like to host a Visit in 2025, please submit your request via the Society’s online applications portal.

Applications for a 2025 Visit will close on Friday 29 November 2024, with decisions made shortly after this date.

If you would like to discuss options for a Visit, please contact the Society’s President, marking your email ‘RHS Visit’: president@royalhistsoc.org.

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HEADER IMAGE: Willem Blaeu’s ‘Britannia Prout’ 1645, detail, iStock.

 

Mapping the State. English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act, by Martin Spychal, is the latest title published in the Society’s New Historical Perspectives book series.

The 1832 Reform Act was a landmark moment in the development of modern British politics. By overhauling the country’s ancient representative system, the legislation reshaped constitutional arrangements at Westminster, reinvigorated political relationships between the centre and the provinces, and established the political structures and precedents that both shaped and hindered electoral reform over the following century.

 

 

Mapping the State leads to a fundamental rethinking of the 1832 Reform Act by demonstrating how boundary reform, and the reconstruction of England’s electoral map by the little-known 1831–2 boundary commission, underpinned this turning point in the development of the British political nation.

Eschewing traditional approaches to the 1832 Reform Act, it draws from a significant new archival discovery – the working papers of the boundary commission – and a range of innovative quantitative techniques to provide a major reassessment of why and how the 1832 Reform Act passed, its impact on reformed politics both at Westminster and in the constituencies, and its significance to the expansion of the modern British state.

To accompany publication of his book, on 19 September, Martin has written an introductory article for the Society’s blog.

Mapping the State is the 19th title in the Society’s New Historical Perspectives book series, published with University of London Press. All titles in the series, including Martin’s, are published free Open Access, as pdf download and Manifold online reading edition. Mapping the State is also available in a paperback print edition, priced £29.99.

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About the ‘New Historical Perspectives’ book series

New Historical Perspectives (NHP) is the Society’s book series for early career scholars (within ten years of their doctorate), commissioned and edited by the Royal Historical Society, in association with University of London Press and the Institute of Historical Research.

The series publishes monographs and edited collections by early career historians on all chronologies and histories, worldwide. Contracted authors receive mentoring from the editorial boar and an author workshop to develop their manuscript before its final submission.

All titles in the series are published in paperback print and open access (as pdf downloads and Manifold reading editions) with all costs covered by the Royal Historical Society and partners. Recent and forthcoming titles include:

• Anti-Communism in Britain During the Early Cold War A Very British Witch Hunt, by Matthew Gerth (2023)
• Gender, Emotions and Power, 1750–2020, edited by Hannah Parker and Josh Doble (2023)
• Designed for Play: Children’s Playgrounds and the Politics of Urban Space, 1840–2010, by Jon Winder (2024)
• Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z, edited Maria Cannon and Laura Tisdall (forthcoming December 2024)
• Voice, Silence and Gender in South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid Struggle. The Shadow of a Young Woman, by Rachel E. Johnson (forthcoming 2025)

For details and access of all titles in the series, please see here.

 

On Friday 13 September, the Society recommenced its 2024 events programme after an August break. The latest in this year’s RHS Lectures was given by Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock (University of Sheffield) who spoke on ‘How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe’.

Caroline’s lecture followed the trails of some of the many Indigenous Americans who travelled to France in the early seventeenth century, from the three surviving Tupinambá – who were acclaimed as diplomats and converts, caricatured in pamphlets, and baptised Louis, Louis and Louis after their royal godfather – to the Caripou translator and go-between, tricked into a traumatically brutal voyage to France, who saw the Tupi feted at court while he was made to suffer the indignities of a common servant.

As Caroline showed, their fates varied considerably: becoming objects of abuse and exploitation, honoured allies or idealised Christian converts. In each case, the lives of Indigenous travellers in this period appear in fragments. At the same time, their experiences reveal a rich history of Indigenous experience which reflects both the traumatic legacies of enslavement, epidemics, and oppression and also the reality of resistance and adaptation.

Audio and video recordings of Caroline’s lecture will be available shortly.

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Coming soon and now available to book

 

Forthcoming events from the RHS include an online panel discussion on ‘Histories of the British Political Left’, to mark the centenary of the election of the UK’s first Labour government in 1924, and 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.

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

‘Histories of the British Political Left: A Panel Discussion’ (2pm Wednesday 24 October 2024) 

‘Why Writing Women Back into History Matters’, with Janina Ramirez (6pm Tuesday 5 November 2024) 

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Recordings of recent Society lectures, panels and training workshops are available via the events archive.

 

Over the summer, the Royal Historical Society, Institute of Historical Research, and The National Archives hosted three lunchtime conversations as part of their annual programme of ‘History and Archives in Practice’ (HAP 24). These conversations completed a set of events on this year’s theme, ‘Historical Legacies’, which included the annual HAP day conference held in March, this year in partnership with Cardiff University.

The three lunchtime sessions combined videos of projects and discussions with the archivists and historians responsible. Over three weeks, we explored the theme of legacies via history and archiving of portrait photography, documentary film making in 1970s London, and an oral history project recording experiences of the Covid lockdown.

 

1. In Conversation with Brigitte Lardinois: archivist and historian of the Edward Reeves Photography Archive

• Watch the introductory video on the project
• Watch the lunchtime conversation between Brigitte Lardinois and Tom Reeves and Giorgia Tolfo (TNA)

 

2. ‘In Conversation with Tony Dowmunt: co-director of the London Community Video Archive (LCVA)’

• Watch the introductory video on the project
• Watch the lunchtime conversation between Tony Dowmunt and Claire Langhamer (IHR)

 

3. ‘In Conversation with the University of Stirling’s Pandemic Oral History Project team’

• Watch the introductory video on the project
• Watch the lunchtime conversation between Stephen Bowman, Rosie Al-Mulla, and Sarah Bromage and Philip Carter (RHS)

 

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Calls for Participation, History and Archives in Practice, 2025

 

Plans are now under way for HAP 25 on the theme of ‘Working with Memory: History, Storytelling and Practices of Remembrance’. We welcome applications for papers and panels for next year’s event which takes place at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, on Wednesday 5 March 2025.

The closing date for proposals is 30 September 2024.

 

 

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the appointment of its four Centenary and Marshall PhD Fellows for the academic year 2024-25. The Centenary and Marshall Fellowships provide six months funding to postgraduate historians in their third year of research — at a university in the UK or overseas — to complete their dissertation.

RHS Fellows are selected by the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, where they are based. This year’s Centenary Fellows are:

• Eve Pennington who is currently writing her thesis ‘Women, the built environment, and life narratives: reconstructing the relationship between gender and state-led urban development through the new towns in North-West England, c.1961-1989’
• Alexandra Plane currently writing her thesis ‘Reconstructing the Scottish and English Libraries of King James VI and I’

This year’s Marshall Fellows are:

• Rebecca Orr to complete her thesis ‘The Ex-Empire Builders: Migrants of Decolonisation and the Transformation of the Post-War Workplace’
• Rebecca Tyson who is currently writing her thesis ‘Sailing to Conquest: Maritime Activity and Identity in Eleventh-Century Normandy’

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

Details of the next call for this Fellowship scheme, for the academic year 2025-26, will be announced in Spring 2025.

For more on the Society’s Research Funding programme, for historians at all career stages, please see here.

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IMAGE: Box and Books, Uematsu Tōshū, Japanese, Edo period (1615–1868), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, public domain

 

 

 

From 21 August 2024, the Society’s journal, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, becomes fully Open Access.

This means that all articles accepted for publication in the journal will now be automatically published with a Creative Commons licence and freely available to read online. This will ensure that content published in Transactions can be shared, circulated and read by the widest possible readership.

There will be no charge to the author for publishing an article in this way. The costs of open access publication will be covered through agreements between the journal’s publisher, Cambridge University Press, and the author’s institution; or by payment of Article Processing Charges (APCs) from grant or other funds held by the author; or else waived entirely by the publisher, ensuring every Transactions author can publish and receive the benefits of having their work available Open Access.

We very much hope this initiative will encourage a growing range of submissions from authors, worldwide, including those who practice history outside Higher Education, in related sectors or as independent researchers.

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To accompany Transactions‘ move to full Open Access, the editor — Jan Machielsen — writes for the RHS blog about his experience of editing the journal, and looks ahead to forthcoming content.

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Submitting an article to Transactions

Transactions is the flagship academic journal of the Royal Historical Society. First published in 1872, Transactions has been publishing the highest quality scholarship in History for more than 150 years.

Today’s journal publishes 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 history practitioners.

The journal welcomes submissions dealing with any geographical area, from the early middle ages to the very recent past. We also invite articles from authors at every career stage. In line with the Society’s commitment to supporting postgraduate and early career historians, the journal seeks to engage constructively and positively with first-time authors.

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 volume.

If you’re currently researching an article or a think piece, please consider Transactions as the journal in which to publish your work. Articles may be submitted here.

 

 

The Royal Historical Society, and partners, are pleased to announce the launch of next year’s History and Archives in Practice call for participation.

 

Working with Memory: History, Storytelling and Practices of Remembrance
Senate House, University of London, Wednesday 5 March 2025

 

In 2025, people around the world will reflect on 80 years since the end of World War II, remembering this pivotal moment in global history and commemorating the lives lost during the conflict.

Those of us working with history and collections – archivists, historians, researchers and practitioners – think about memory on a daily basis. However, memory itself is an elusive and plural concept, it is both material and immaterial, and working with memory is not without its challenges. With HAP25 we want to consider these challenges, share our learnings, celebrate our successes, and delve into the possibilities that occur at the intersections of history and archives.

We seek to explore how we understand and work with memory, considering questions like: How are memory, storytelling and remembrance felt and practised? How do we decide what memories to collect, and whose stories to tell? And how can we imagine new, expansive and intersectional ways of working with memory within our practices?

HAP25 aims to explore, but is not limited to, some of the following topics:

• Commemoration and remembrance: How and why do individuals, communities, and nations work together to commemorate and remember? How have practices changed over time and how might they look in the future? What is the role of historians and archivists and what can we learn from those outside of our professions
• Storytelling, history and archival practice: How does storytelling inform, challenge and expand our practices as historians and archivists?   In what ways can we tell stories to enhance access to and collaboration with histories and collections? And how do innovative forms of collecting and engaging impact our understanding of storytelling?
• Ethics and working with memory:  What are the ethical challenges and considerations of working with and recording memory? How can storytelling and working with memory challenge archival absences?
• Home, personal memories and archives: How might we rethink collecting practices, to incorporate contemporary objects and personal archives? How do family historians work with memory?
• Community memory: How do communities work to ensure the inclusion of their stories and experiences? How do we best collaborate on this? Who is best placed to be doing this work? How do national memory narratives change? How do community memories get a place on the transnational stage of remembering?
• Institutional memory and beyond: How is institutional memory accessed? How can institutional memory interact with and respond to memory beyond the institution? How can historians, archivists, information managers and stakeholders collaborate to ensure that institutional memory is reflexive and reflective of the needs of different users?
• Beyond materiality: How do we think about the immaterial and material memory of collections How can we collaborate with conservators, heritage scientists and practitioners to look beyond the materiality of a record to preserve its memory

HAP25 is particularly keen to highlight and support smaller organisations, underrepresented collections, and marginalised voices as well as new and emerging research.

How to submit a proposal? 

• Please submit an abstract (300 words) by 11.45PM on 30 September 2024 using the form on the IHR website: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HAP25-CfP

Please get in touch with HAP organisers at research@nationalarchives.gov.uk if you have any questions.

More information is available on the IHR website: https://www.history.ac.uk/events/cfp-hap25

 

Video and audio recordings of the Royal Historical Society’s latest event — ‘AI, History and Historians’ — are now available.

This discussion (held on 17 July 2024) brought together a panel of experts to consider the opportunities and challenges of new AI technology in the field of History.

Topics included the use of AI in university assessments, detecting and mitigating dataset biases, environmental impacts of generative AI, and challenges for historians around using AI as the latest new technology to bring change to research and teaching practices. You can watch / listen to the recordings below or read more about the impact of AI on the field of history in this recent RHS blog post, written by Adam Budd, Secretary for Education at the Royal Historical Society.

 

 

Listen to the event

 

With contributions from our panellists

• Helen Hastie (Professor of Human-Robot Interaction at the University of Edinburgh and Head of School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh)
• Matthew L. Jones (Smith Family Professor of History at Princeton University and co-author of How Data Happened, a history of the science, politics, and power of data, statistics, and machine learning from the 1800s to the present (2023)
• Anna-Maria Sichani (Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Digital Humanities Research Hub, School of Advanced Study, University of London)
• Jane Winters (Professor of Digital Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Vice-President, Publications, for the Royal Historical Society, chair)

 

 

The Royal Historical Society is deeply concerned by the scale and potential impact of further redundancies in the History department at Goldsmiths, University of London. 

These latest cuts will reduce the department’s teaching and research capacity from eleven to six members of staff. This follows a previous, extensive round of redundancies imposed in 2022. If the current proposals go ahead, Goldsmiths—a member of the University of London—will suffer a 75% reduction in History staff between 2022 and 2024.

Cuts of this kind significantly reduce the options available to existing and potential students, many of whom are reliant on their local university to study the subject of choice. They also wreak havoc on the careers and personal lives of academic historians.

At Goldsmiths the present cuts hit even harder: threatening the very identity of the History department and, indeed, the UK’s provision of specialist historical teaching and research. This is especially so for Masters’ study which is a gateway to PhD work. Goldsmiths’ redundancy plans will see the loss of specialist historians and convenors, making high-profile degree courses impossible to continue. With this will come the loss of specialist training opportunities for current and future students.

To take one example of Goldsmiths’ distinctiveness and national role: Black British History. 

Last month the Royal Historical Society published an Update to its 2018 report, Race, Ethnicity and Equality in UK History. As our Update states, this a pivotal moment in the provision of Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority histories in UK Higher Education. Welcome is the recent creation of dedicated lectureships in this field, principally at Russell Group universities. At the same time, we’ve seen the very unwelcome closure of a pioneering Masters’ programme in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester. 

Cuts at Goldsmiths now threaten the UK’s sole Masters’ option in Black British History. As we argue in the Update: ‘This is exactly the profile of degree course, student body and department that UK Higher Education needs to exist and to champion’. Goldsmiths History is a department with high BME student intake from, and engagement with, its immediate community: 80% of students on the Black British History MA are Black and 95% are Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic—percentages far in excess of other History Masters’ programmes across the UK. The scale and focus of redundancies at Goldsmiths will significantly diminish, or close, dedicated Masters’ programmes that are training the next generations of historians to work in academia and related sectors. 

The losses created and suffered will be wider still. Goldsmiths provides an entry point into higher education for many first-generation students. Of all London History departments, Goldsmiths admits the highest proportion of undergraduates with little or no previous family engagement in university education. The profile of Goldsmiths History—and the college as a whole—is notably broad, with high numbers of part-time and mature students. Close to 50% of Goldsmiths’ students are from BME backgrounds with a similar percentage from London, many of whom live at home and commute. Redundancies and the loss of courses hit hardest on those who, having chosen History for their degree, have far less choice on where they can afford to study. 

There is a very great deal at stake here. The Royal Historical Society is deeply concerned for the positions and future of all historians and History students at Goldsmiths. As in 2022, the Society is writing directly to the college’s senior managers to express concern from our position of disciplinary expertise. We also continue our meetings with parliamentarians: to secure political action on the crisis affecting History in UK Higher Education, and enable universities to better fulfil their capacity for social mobility and training. History’s long-term popularity as a degree choice, along with the skills and opportunities it provides, mean our subject is central to this debate.

More immediately, we urge Goldsmiths’ managers to think again and protect—not further erode—the assets and talents integral to Goldsmiths History. The loss of any and all historical expertise will make the college poorer. The loss of distinctive courses, unique to the Goldsmiths, will also make History poorer—denying us the specialist knowledge, commitment and role models that we, and future historians, so desperately need.

The President, Officers and Council of the Royal Historical Society