RHS News

The Royal Historical Society’s annual first book and article prizes recognise excellent historical scholarship and achievement. These prizes are open to early career historians, either for their first monograph or an article published while a PhD student or soon after completion of a doctorate.

The call for submissions for the 2025 prizes will open on Monday 2 December 2024 and close on Friday 31 January 2025. A further announcement of the call will be made on 2 December.

For the 2025 prize round, the Society is introducing the following changes.

For the RHS First Book Award:

• the Society moves to a single book prize for which two winning titles will be identified each year. All books submitted will be considered for this single book prize, with no distinction made (as in previous years) for books relating to ‘British and Irish’ and ‘non-British and Irish’ history.
• in 2025, we also move to a system of self-nomination by authors of first books published in the previous calendar year. This replaces the previous application process of submission by publisher. We hope these changes will encourage submissions of the widest range of first monographs by early career historians which reflects the diversity of the historical profession and practice.

For the RHS Early Career Article Prize:

• the Society extends the eligibility period to authors within three years of completing a PhD in history at a UK or Irish university. This replaces the previous criterion for authors currently studying for a PhD or within two years of having completed their dissertation.

All other eligibility requirements remain as for 2024 and previous years. For full details and guidance on how to make a submission, please see the individual pages for the RHS First Book Prize and RHS Early Career Article Prize.

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General enquiries about Society’s Prizes should be sent to: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

 

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the next call for its RHS Workshop Grants for projects to take place in 2025. This scheme provides funding of £1,000 per Grant to enable historians to undertake activities, broadly defined, to pursue historical research, study and discussion. In this round, the Society will make up to six awards for Workshops to be held in 2025.

Applications are now invited via the Society’s online application portal, before the closing date: 23:59 on Friday 24 January 2025. Applicants / lead organisers of a Workshop must be current Fellows or Members of the Society.

This is the third round of RHS Workshops Grants since the scheme began in 2023; further details of the projects awarded funding in 2024 are listed below.

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About the Call

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Eligibility

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

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

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How to apply

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

• the academic focus of the Workshop and the topic / activity under consideration
• the purpose and proposed outcome from the Workshop
• costings for holding a one-day event
• the location of the proposed Workshop, and whether this may be the RHS Office at University College London
• the lead organiser(s) and proposed participants who would be involved in the Workshop
• the proposed date of the Workshop, to be held in 2025

Proposals should be submitted via the Society’s online application platform by the deadline of 23:59 on Friday 24 January 2025.

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Recipients of RHS Workshops Grants, 2024

The following six projects were awarded funding in the second round of Workshops announced in 2024:

• Arunima Datta (University of North Texas) for ‘(Re)Visioning London through “Black” Dialogues’
• Helen Glew (University of Westminster) for ‘Pat Thane: Reflections on History, Policy and Action’
• Elizabeth Goodwin (York St John University) for a ‘Network Building Symposium for Historians in Post 92 Institutions’
• Claire Kennan (King’s College, London) for ‘A Workshop in Ruins’
• Aparajita Mukhopadhyay (University of Kent) for ‘Mobilising Imperial History: Crime, Policing and Control in the British Empire’
• Jamie Wood and Graham Barrett (University of Lincoln) for ‘Present and Precedent in the Church Councils of Late Antique Iberia’

 

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the recipients of its Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships for 2024-25. The Fellowships, now in their second year, support historians to introduce new approaches to their teaching, or undertake a defined study of an aspect of history teaching in UK Higher Education.

The Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellowships are named after Dame Jinty Nelson FBA (1942-2024), who served as President of the Society between 2000 and 2004. A leading historian of early medieval Europe, Jinty was also, for four decades, a superb teacher and supervisor at King’s College London.

Our thanks also to the Scouloudi Foundation for its support of this year’s Fellowships.

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RHS Jinty Nelson Teaching Fellows in the academic year 2024-25:

• Katie Carpenter (University of Leeds) for ‘Brick By Brick: A History Co-Creation Project’
• David Clayton (York) for ‘Piloting the Responsible and Effective Use of AI in Undergraduate History Teaching’
• Matthew Hefferan (Nottingham) for ‘Using formative assessment activities to support undergraduate transition into history degrees’
• Linsey Hunter (Highlands & Islands) for a ‘Short pilot study to explore best teaching practice of student-led co-design of undergraduate history modules at the University of the Highlands and Islands’
• Sundeep Lidher (King’s College London) for ‘Archives against the Grain’
• Lydia Plath (Warwick) for her project ‘Enabling students to feel “Emboldened and Enthralled”: Co-creating learning resources for digital databases’
• Lowri Rees (Bangor) for ‘Innovative Approaches in Teaching Welsh History’
• Elaine Sisson (Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin) for ‘Archives and Public Engagement’

The Society will provide updates on each of these projects as they come to fruition in the academic year 2024-25. The call for the Fellowships, 2024-25 will be made next year. Updates from Fellowships held in 2023-24 are available here.

For more on the Society’s Research Funding programme and current open calls, please see here.

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HEADER IMAGE: iStock Credit: natrot

 

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.