RHS News

On Monday 18 September, members of the Society’s Council visited colleagues at the Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands. The Visit is the latest in this autumn’s series of meetings with historians at universities across the UK.

The day brought together historians and professional support staff from the Centre for History, at Dornoch, with members of the Society’s Council. An RHS panel focused on the Society’s role in supporting distinctive departments like the Highlands and Islands; on distance learning, in which the Centre specialises; employability for graduate historians; and the state of History in Scottish Higher Education. Presentations from Centre staff described their specialist work on public and community history across the northern Highlands, and its links to tourism and economic development.

Public history was also the focus for a concluding public lecture–by our guest speaker Professor Lucy Noakes (Essex)–on ‘Histories, communities and feelings in the centenary of the First World War’. Lucy’s lecture, delivered to audiences in Dornoch and online, discussed the form and content of commemorative projects, 2014-18, and their relationship to regional communities, including those in the Highlands and Islands.

Many thanks to Lucy, and all those who attended her lecture; to our co-organisers of the Visit at the Centre for History; and to the historians at University of the Highlands and Islands for attending and hosting this event.

Forthcoming Visits and sponsored lectures

Visits are an opportunity for the Society’s Council members and staff to meet with historians. Visits also include an RHS sponsored lecture by a guest lecturer.

Our next Visit (Monday 16 October) is to historians at the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, and includes a public lecture, ‘Naming and Shaming? Telling Bad Bridget Stories’, with guest lecturers Elaine Farrell (Queen’s University Belfast) and Leanne McCormick (Ulster). Booking for this event is now open.

Further Visits, to the universities of York St John, York and Brunel, take place in early 2024.

On Monday 11 September, members of the Society’s Council visited colleagues at the universities of Christ Church Canterbury and Kent. The Visit is the latest in this autumn’s series of meetings with historians at universities across the UK.

The day included a panel discussion on ‘Surviving and thriving in a history department today’, with the RHS President Emma Griffin and faculty members and early career historians from Christ Church Canterbury and Kent. The discussion focused on challenges facing the profession, potential new directions for teaching and research, advocacy, and the role of the Royal Historical Society in supporting historians and the discipline.

This was followed by a public lecture by Professor William Pettigrew (Lancaster) on his current research on the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, an often-forgotten founder of England’s contribution to the transatlantic trade in enslaved African people in the 1660s. Our thanks to William; our panellists, the co-organisers of the Visit at Christ Church and Kent; and all those who attended.

Forthcoming Visits and sponsored lectures

Visits are an opportunity for the Society’s Council members and staff to meet with historians. Visits also include an RHS sponsored lecture by a guest lecturer. Our next Visit (Monday 18 September) is to the Centre for History, University of the Highlands and Islands, Dornoch, which includes a public lecture by Lucy Noakes (Essex)–‘Histories, communities and feelings in the centenary of the First World War’–which all are welcome to attend, in person or online.

This is followed, on Monday 16 October, with a Visit to the University of Hertfordshire, including a lecture–‘Naming and Shaming? Telling Bad Bridget Stories’–with Elaine Farrell (Queen’s University Belfast) and Leanne McCormick (Ulster).

Further Visits, to the universities of York St John, York and Brunel, take place in early 2024.

The President and Council of the Royal Historical Society are extremely disappointed and concerned by the University of Chichester’s recent decision to terminate its MRes in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora. This action also sees the redundancy of Professor Hakim Adi, the course leader and a prominent UK contributor to the understanding and communication of Black British history. News of Professor Adi’s redundancy came a week before inclusion of his latest book, African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History, on the 2023 Wolfson Prize shortlist.

From contact with historians on this subject, we know many others share our concern about the treatment of Professor Adi; the serious implications for Chichester students currently studying for the MRes; the rapidity with which this damaging decision has been carried through; and the wider implications for the study of the histories of Africa, the African diaspora UK, and Black Britons. This broad concern is further evident in responses to the History Matters petition on behalf of Professor Adi and the MRes in History of Africa and the African Diaspora.

October 2023 sees the fifth anniversary since publication of the Royal Historical Society’s Race, Ethnicity & Equality in UK History. Among that report’s findings was the virtual absence of Black History staff in UK universities. Welcome advances have been made since 2018, notably with the active mentoring and recruitment of historians of colour, the creation of dedicated lectureships, and broader curriculum development. However, these remain first steps that we must continue to promote and encourage.

With its decision, the University of Chichester goes against initiatives that seek to build an infrastructure for teaching and researching Black British History—one that’s accessible to students of diverse backgrounds across the UK.

As the Society commented earlier this year, provision of History is now, very regrettably, at risk in a growing number of UK universities. Loss of courses, student choice and specialist knowledge is always of great concern everywhere. This is especially so when—as at Chichester—it closes a pioneering, distinctive and rare degree in the history of the African diaspora and Black Britain. Explanations for Chichester’s decision highlight the pressures faced in a marketized HE economy. Financial considerations are indeed a reality of the modern university. But, equally, we simply cannot afford such losses if what’s taught in UK History departments is to speak both to the interests and diversity of students and to our complex past.

The President, Officers and Council Members of the Royal Historical Society

Since 2009 the Royal Historical Society has worked with the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) and the publisher Brepols to fund and manage the Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH). 

From January 2025 the RHS will be ending its formal association with the Bibliography, which will proceed as a partnership between the IHR and Brepols. The Bibliography will continue, as presently, with a dedicated Editor, Section Editors, and publication of regular updates of bibliographic records. Funding is now in place to support this new IHR / Brepols partnership, and the Bibliography.  

Professor Roey Sweet, who currently serves as BBIH’s Academic Director, will continue in this role. In addition, Brepols will enable members of the RHS to remain eligible for individual subscriptions to the Bibliography at discounted rates. Until January 2025, the Society will continue to provide its present levels of support for the Bibliography, including a smooth hand over to the new arrangement.

The Society’s decision to end its involvement with the Bibliography was taken by the RHS Council following a recent review of the Society’s wider publishing strategy. This considered how the RHS best uses its limited resources to support a range of existing and new academic publishing, now and in the future. More on these developments and new initiatives will be made public in the coming months.

The Society would like to thank all those involved with the Bibliography during this transition phase. In particular, we wish to thank editorial, and other, staff at the Institute of Historical Research and at Brepols, and Professor Sweet for her considerable contribution to the Bibliography.

More on these forthcoming management changes is also available here from the Institute of Historical Research.

Visits are an important opportunity, for members of the Society’s Council and staff, to meet with historians, researchers and students, and to discuss priorities, interests and concerns relating to research, teaching and the profession.

Having met with colleagues at Edge Hill and Northampton earlier this year, the Society continues its 2023 programme of Visits to history departments with meetings at Canterbury Christ Church and Kent (11 September), the Highlands and Islands (18 September) and Hertfordshire (16 October).

Each Visit includes a public lecture given by a guest lecturer to which all are welcome. Further details and links for booking are below. We look forward to seeing you at one of these events.

‘The Transatlantic Trade in Enslaved African People and Restoration England’, with William Pettigrew (Lancaster University), RHS-Sponsored Lecture at Canterbury Christ Church University: 5pm, Monday 11 September 2023

 ‘”In memory of my Great Grandfather and his infant son”: Histories, communities and feelings in the centenary of the First World War’, with Lucy Noakes (University of Essex), RHS-Sponsored Lecture at the Centre for History, Highlands and Islands University, Dornoch: 5.30pm, Monday 18 September 2023

‘Naming and Shaming? Telling Bad Bridget Stories’, with Elaine Farrell (Queen’s University Belfast) and Leanne McCormick (University of Ulster), RHS-Sponsored Lecture at University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield: 5.30pm, Monday 16 October 2023

Visits in early 2024 include to the universities of York and York St John (March) and Brunel (May), with guest lectures from Fay Bound Alberti (KCL) and Corinne Fowler (Leicester).

The video of the Society’s recent Workshop — ‘Scholarly Editing for Historians: an Introduction and Guide to Working with Primary Texts’ — is now available.

The event — hosted by the Richard Gaunt and Siobhan Talbott (Series Editors for the Society’s Camden Series of Primary Sources) — provided a general guide to editing, alongside two focused session on working with medieval, early modern and modern sources.

Richard and Siobhan were joined in the breakout sessions by two recent contributors to the Camden Series, Daniel Patterson, editor of The Diary of George Lloyd, 1642-1718 (2022), and Jayne Gifford, co-editor of Sir Earle Page’s British War Cabinet Diary, 1941-42 (2021),

Topics covered in the Workshop include: advice on how to select a suitable primary source; options for publishing scholarly editions; approaching a publisher, and what to consider when writing a proposal; determining editorial conventions; and writing an introduction for an edition.

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. Each volume is edited by a specialist historian who provides an expert introduction and commentary.

The complete Camden Series now comprises over 380 volumes of primary source material, ranging from the early medieval to late-twentieth century Britain. The full series is available online via Cambridge University Press, providing a rich conspectus of source material for British History as well as insights into the development of historical scholarship in the English speaking world.

Today the Society publishes two new Camden volumes each year in association with Cambridge University Press.

Contributing to the Series

Richard and Siobhan welcome submissions for future Camden volumes. If you have a proposal for a Camden Society volume, please:

• contact the editors with an initial enquiry camden.editors@royalhistsoc.org OR
• complete and submit the Camden Series Proposal Form and send your completed proposal to the Editors: camden.editors@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 six invited specialist readers to discuss a manuscript in detail.

The grant recipients for 2023 are:

• Jennifer Aston (University of Northumbria) for her project: ‘For Wives Alone’: Deserted Wives and Economic Divorce in Nineteenth Century England and Wales
• Tim Grady (University of Chester) for his project: ‘The Unwelcome Gravediggers’: War, Memory and the Unmaking of British-German Relations

These workshops will be held in the academic year 2023-24.

Further details of current calls for Royal Historical Society research funding (August-November 2023) are available here.

The video of this year’s Royal Historical Society Prothero Lecture is now available. The 2023 lecture — ‘To Do and Be Undone: Enslaved Black Life, Courtship, and Marriage in the Antebellum South’ — was delivered on 5 July by Brenda E. Stevenson, Hillary Rodham Clinton Professor of Women’s History at Oxford University.

Professor Stevenson’s lecture centres on the familial ideals and realities of enslaved Black people in the American South via their courtship and marriages, ritually and experientially. The trope of the missing Black family has lived large in the ambitious research designs of scholars, the critical imagination of the public, and the caustic decisions of policy makers. The reality, however, is that even through the pain and loss brought on by centuries of slavery and systemic racialised inequalities of all sorts, Black people wanted and were able to create family ties that fostered humanity, assured survival, and even undergird post-emancipation progress across the generations.

The lecture describes and analyses courtship/romantic attitudes and behaviours, the traits that adults desired and despised in a partner, the negotiations with family and captors regarding one’s choice for a spouse, and the various kinds of ceremonies (or not) that signified one’s marital commitments.

The Royal Historical Society’s annual Prothero Lecture is named for the historian George W. Prothero (1848-1922) who — as President of the Society between 1901-05 — played a significant role in the professionalisation of the historical discipline and the Society’s role in supporting the historical profession.

Prothero Lectures have been given annually since 1969. Previous Prothero lecturers include, among many others, Joanna Bourke, Linda Colley, Stefan Collini, Natalie Zemon Davis, Roy Foster, Olwen Hufton, Sujit Sivasundaram and Keith Thomas.