RHS News

Society’s former Secretary for Research appointed chair of History sub-panel for REF2029

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

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

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

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

Society’s President and Councillors visit historians at the University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus

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

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

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

UK visits to historians are a regular feature of the Society’s annual event’s programme. Forthcoming visits are to the universities of Aberdeen and Suffolk, to meet with academic historians, students, public history groups, and Society members from the area. Further details of these forthcoming visits will be announced later in the year.

Forthcoming volumes in the Society’s Camden series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recent volumes in the Camden series

Recent volumes in the series include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the Camden series

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Society elects 337 new Fellows, Associate Fellows, Members and Postgraduate Members

At its latest meeting on 2 May 2025, the RHS Council elected 85 Fellows, 53 Associate Fellows, 78 Members and 101 Postgraduate Members, a total of 337 people newly associated with the Society, from today.

The majority of the new Fellows hold academic appointments at universities, specialising in a wide range of fields; but also include curators, librarians, heritage specialists, independent researchers and writers. The Society is an international community of historians and our latest intake includes Fellows from eleven countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The new Associate Fellows include not only early career historians in higher education but also historians with professional and private research interests drawn from heritage, learned societies, libraries and archives, teaching, and public and community history.

The new Members have a similarly wide range of historical interests, and include individuals working in universities, culture and heritage, education, the civil service and broadcasting – together with independent and community historians and genealogists.

Our new Postgraduate Members are studying for higher degrees in history, or related subjects, at 68 different universities in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, India, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, the United States, and Zambia.

All those newly elected to the Fellowship and Membership bring a valuable range of expertise and experience to the Society.

New Fellows and Members are elected at regular intervals through the year. The current application round is open and runs to 26 May and 11 August 2025. Further details on RHS Fellowship and Membership categories (Fellow, Associate Fellow, Member and Postgraduate Member); benefits of membership; deadlines for applications; and how to apply, are available here.

New Fellows, elected May 2025

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

New Associate Fellows, elected May 2025

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

New Members, elected May 2025

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

New Postgraduate Members, elected May 2025

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

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

Calls for research funding from the Royal Historical Society: seven current programmes

The Society currently invites applications for the following seven schemes — open to historians across a range of career stages — with closing dates between 31 May and 5 September 2025. For further information on each programme, eligibility and how to apply please follow the links below.

Closing dates in May 2025

Centenary PhD Fellowships, providing grants of £8,500 per award, and for six months, to support PhD students complete their doctorate. Successful applicants will hold their Fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Applications are not restricted to current members of the Society. Two Fellowships will be awarded for the academic year 2025-26. Next closing date: 31 May 2025

Closing dates, June 2025

Postgraduate Research Support Grants providing grants of either £500 or £1,000 (based on the activity to be undertaken) to undertake historical research. Activities supported include: visiting an archive or historic site, or conducting interviews. These grants are reserved for historians who are Postgraduate Members of the Royal Historical Society, currently studying for a Masters degree or PhD. Next closing date: Friday 6 June 2025.
Early Career Research Support Grants providing grants of either £500 or £1,000 (based on the activity to be undertaken) to undertake historical research. Activities supported include: visiting an archive or historic site, or conducting interviews. These grants are reserved for historians who are within 5 years of submitting their PhD in a historical subject. Applicants must also be members of the Royal Historical Society. Next closing date: Friday 6 June 2025.
Masters’ Scholarships, 2025-26, grants of £5000 to support Masters’ students from groups currently underrepresented in history in UK higher education. Stage One for this programme closes on Friday 6 June 2025.

Closing dates in July 2025

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

Closing dates in September 2025

Martin Lynn Scholarship in African History providing a grant of £1,500 to support postgraduate research for a PhD in African history. The Scholarship is open Postgraduate Members of the Royal Historical Society, currently studying for a PhD. Next closing date: Friday 5 September 2025.

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

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

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

PhD Fellowships now available for postgraduate historians to complete doctorates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recordings of Mark Stoyle’s recent RHS lecture now available

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

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

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

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

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

Forthcoming RHS talks and lectures

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

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

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

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

New funding calls to support innovative teaching and book publishing by mid-career historians

Applications are now invited from members of the Royal Historical Society for the following two funding programmes:

Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships – providing funding of between £500 and £1250 to support innovations in the teaching of history in higher education, with projects to take place in the academic year 2025-26.

Fellowships support historians in Higher Education who wish to introduce new approaches and initiatives to their teaching—and for which funding is required to make this possible. Fellowships may also support those seeking to undertake a short study of an aspect of History teaching in UK Higher Education. The Fellowships are named after Dame Jinty Nelson FBA (1942-2024), President of the Society between 2000 and 2004. Further details and how to apply.

Funded Book Workshops – providing funding of £2000 per day-workshop to enable mid-career authors to bring together six specialist readers to discuss a book manuscript in detail prior to its submission to a publisher. Workshops provide a constructive environment in which work-in-progress is developed to become a richer book on publication.

The programme seeks to address a lack of intellectual support that many historians face in mid career. This lack of support is often in contrast to that provided when studying for a PhD, and writing first articles or monograph derived from a doctorate. Further details and how to apply.

The closing dates for both calls is Friday 11 July 2025. For those interested in applying but not yet members of the Society, please see the Join Us pages of the RHS website.

HEADER IMAGES: iStock, credits natrot and sabelskaya

Peter Gatrell to give the 2025 RHS Prothero Lecture

The Society’s 2025 Prothero Lecture will be given by Peter Gatrell, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Manchester. Peter’s lecture, which takes place at 6.30pm on Wednesday 2 July, is entitled: ‘Refugee World(s): a Twentieth-Century Retrospective’.

In his lecture, Peter will consider the idea of a ‘fourth world’ or ‘refugee world (s)’ as essential for the writing of a modern global history of refugees, displacement and population movement. It may be legitimate to think of the ‘refugee world’ as a distinct realm of being; but it is more appropriate to consider refugees’ encounters with refugee-creating and refugee-hosting (and refugee-deterring) states and, with the range of organisations charged with their protection and assistance.

Peter’s focus is on the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) which the dominant intergovernmental organisation in what has come to be called the international refugee regime. By drawing on the letters and petitions that refugees sent to UNHCR in the post-1945 era, the lecture examines what refugees vouchsafed about their situation and what response they received.

The 2025 Prothero Lecture take place, in-person, at Mary Ward House, Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SN and online. Booking for in-person and online attendance is now available. The lecture is open to all.

The Lecture will be followed by the Society’s annual summer party, at Mary Ward House, to which all are very welcome.

First held in 1969, the Royal Historical Society’s Prothero Lecture is named for the historian and RHS President, George W. Prothero (1848-1924). The lecture is given by leading historians whose research has shaped how we think about the past. Previous Prothero lecturers include: Samuel H. Beer, Joanna Bourke, Linda Colley, Stefan Collini, Natalie Zemon Davis, Olwen Hufton, Sujit Sivasundaram, Quentin Skinner, Brenda E. Stevenson, and Keith Thomas.

Other forthcoming events

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

RHS President Lucy Noakes on ‘Making the Case for History’

The Society’s President, Professor Lucy Noakes, writes this week for History Workshop.

In her article — ‘Making the Case for History. A View from the Royal Historical Society’ — Lucy considers the implications of cuts on the provision of history teaching and research, and how we advocate for our discipline and profession. Headlines from the article include:

The extent and impact of cuts

Between 2021 and Spring 2025, the Society has worked with historians from 23 UK institutions facing challenges to fulfil their responsibilities as teachers and researchers.
Communications come from across the UK, from all kinds of institutions, and those working in and outside of history departments.
Cuts are continuing to hit hardest in departments at Post-92 universities. Here, nearly 90% of history departments, in a 2024 RHS survey, reported cuts to staffing since 2020, and nearly 60% have seen cuts to degree programmes.

Student numbers and choices

History is in the 10 most popular subjects in the arts, humanities and social sciences. However, history enrolments are falling: by 11% between 2019 and 2023.
UCAS data shows the sharpest decline in undergraduate history admissions is among male students aged 18. For female students aged 18 years, the number of accepted applicants in history—between 2020 and 2024—has remained stable.
While history is seen as a ‘gateway’ subject at A-Level, students, parents and teachers are increasingly cautious of the ‘value’ studying history at university.

Advocating for history

Those who do study history at university consider it valuable: in the 2024 National Student Survey, 80% of history graduates were confident the skills gained would serve them well in the workforce—a level higher than many more overtly vocational programmes.
History is of great appeal to the public: much of this popular and public history originates with historians in UK universities
Organisations promoting history and the humanities need to coordinate their work, share expertise, and campaign together when appropriate. We need to train ourselves—and also our members—to become more effective advocates.

Earlier this month, Lucy also spoke to BBC History Online about the current state of history in UK higher education, the impact of cuts, and harnessing the wider popularity of history in national culture.

You can also read more in the Society’s latest briefing, ‘The Value of History in UK Higher Education and Society’ (October 2024), which includes downloadable charts, tables and slides on the professional opportunities afforded by a history degree.

Header image, and all images in the article, commissioned from Eanna Swan by History Workshop.