RHS News

Applications are now invited for the Society’s new mentoring and workshop programme: ‘First Academic Articles programme for Early Career Historians of Colour’.

The purpose of this programme is to provide guidance to early career historians of colour who are engaged in writing one of the first articles of their academic career. This programme is one of several run by the Society for early career historians of colour. The call for the Society’s second annual programme, ‘On CV Writing and Applying for an Academic Job’, will be announced later in the year.

Successful applicants will work with mentors to develop an academic article  (July-October) and then taken part on a workshop on journal publishing in November 2024. ‘First Academic Articles’ will be limited to 10 participants and is being led, on behalf of the Society’s Council, by Dr Rebekah Lee.

Invitations are invited from early career historians of colour who are in the process of preparing a historical research article for publication in an academic journal. Applicants may have already published one article / book chapter / literature review and still be eligible to apply for the programme. Successful applicants must be able to provide mentors with a draft article in line with the timetable of the programme. 

For more on the programme and how to apply please see here. Applications close on Monday 17 June 2024

Questions regarding this mentoring and workshop programme may be sent to: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

 

On Thursday 23 May, members of the Society’s Council were in Uxbridge to meet with historians and senior managers at Brunel University.

The day brought together teaching staff, researchers and students, along with members of the university’s senior management. Panels considered the work of historians at Brunel, the state of History within UK higher education, and the Society’s engagement with politicians to raise concerns about cuts and closures in departments. A session with RHS Councillors also discussed the role and work of the Royal Historical Society, and how the Society can best respond to the needs of historians, of all kinds, at the regional and national level.

The RHS Visit to Brunel closed with a public lecture, ‘Country Walks in Colonial Britain’, given by Corinne Fowler (University of Leicester). In this lecture Corinne discussed her new book, Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain (May 2024) and the colonial connections and legacies found when walking the British countryside.

We are very grateful to historians at Brunel University for hosting the Visit, and especially Dr Alison Carol and Dr Inge Dornan for organising the day. We are also very grateful to those from across the university who took part in the panel discussions, and to the Vice Chancellor and Pro Vice Chancellor Research for meeting with the Council to discuss History at Brunel. And special thanks to Professor Corinne Fowler for her excellent guest lecture which formed part of the 2024 Brunel Research Festival (13-31 May).

 

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce its call for applications for its Masters’ Scholarships programme 2024-25.

RHS Masters’ Scholarships provide financial support to students from groups currently underrepresented in academic History. Each Scholarship is worth £5,000.

This year the Society seeks to award eight scholarships to students who will begin a Masters’ degree in History (full or part-time) at a UK university from the start of the next academic year. The Society thanks the Past & Present Society and the Scouloudi Foundation for their generous support of this year’s awards.

The programme, established in 2022, seeks to actively address underrepresentation within the discipline, and enable Black and Asian students, along with those of other minorities, 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, we seek 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.

Further details of the programme, the eligibility requirements and closing dates for applications are available here.

 

The recording of Julia Laite’s recent RHS Lecture is now available. Julia’s lecture explores the ways of mapping and knowing Newfoundland — official and unofficial, colonial and Indigenous — in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The lecture reconsiders the place of this ‘unknown’ island and its difficult history within the British Empire.

Julia’s lecture, ‘Possible Maps: Ways of Knowing and Unknowing at the Edge of Empire (Newfoundland c. 1763-1829)’, was given at Mary Ward House, London, on Friday 3 May.

Listen to the Lecture

 

Julia is Professor of Modern History at Birkbeck, University of London

You can also watch and listen to this, and many other, Society lectures and panel discussions via the RHS Events Archive.

 

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Join us next for the Society’s 2024 Prothero Lecture

 

 

In this year’s RHS Prothero Lecture, Peter Frankopan (Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford) will ask what is global history; should historians think globally – and is it even possible to do so? How does macro-history fit alongside microhistories and regional and periodic specialisations; and what do these questions mean for the teaching of history at school and university?

In a wide-ranging lecture that will include examples from Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley, from Mesoamerica and the Classic Maya period to the ages of the Silk Roads, Professor Frankopan will talk about the problems of traditional periodisation and regionalisation and show how global history can be instructive and helpful from teaching at primary school level to high-level academic research to public history.

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The RHS Prothero Lecture is followed, from 8.00pm, by the Society’s Annual Summer Party at Mary Ward House, London. The Society’s annual summer party is an opportunity for historians to meet together and to speak with members of the Society’s Council. All lecture attendees are warmly welcome to join us for the party after the Prothero Lecture.

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6.30pm BST, Wednesday 3 July 2024 in person, at Mary Ward House, London.

Royal Historical Society Prothero Lecture, 2024: ‘On the Challenges and Purposes of Global History’

Speaker: Peter Frankopan (Oxford)

Booking for in-person and online attendance for this Lecture is now available.

 

At its latest meeting on 3 May 2024, the RHS Council elected 72 Fellows, 57 Associate Fellows, 60 Members and 92 Postgraduate Members, a total of 281 people newly associated with the Society, from today.

The majority of the new Fellows hold academic appointments at universities, specialising in a very wide range of fields; but also include museum curators, archivists, heritage consultants, and independent researchers and writers. The Society is an international community of historians and our latest intake includes Fellows from sixteen countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and United States.

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

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

Our new Postgraduate Members are studying for higher degrees in History, or related subjects, at 60 different universities in the UK, China, Germany, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan and the United States.

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

New Fellows and Members are elected at regular intervals through the year. The current application round is open and runs to 27 May 2024 with the next closing date of 12 August 2024. Further details on RHS Fellowship and Membership categories (Fellow, Associate Fellow, Member and Postgraduate Member); benefits of membership; deadlines for applications throughout 2024; and how to apply, are available here.

 

New Fellows, elected May 2024

• Benjamin Armstrong
• Duncan Anderson
• Gordon Bates
• Hannah Boston
• Jeff Bowersox
• Francesco Bozzi
• Timothy Brain
• Patrick Bray
• Sarah Brazil
• Stephan Bruhn
• Elias Buchetmann
• Bryony Coombs
• Fred Cooper
• Tony Cowan
• Andrew Crawley
• Erik de Lange
• Rachel Delman
• Myriam-Isabelle Ducrocq
• Matthew Daniel Eddy
• Danny  Evans
• Suzanne Fagence Cooper
• Daniel  Feather
• Pelayo Fernández García
• George Ferzoco
• Craig Griffiths
• Arthur Gullachsen
• Catherine Hanley
• Eureka Henrich
• Adrian Hilton
• Niamh Howlin
• Richard Huscroft
• Chloe Ireton
• Jean-Michel Johnston
• Daniel  Kaszeta
• Yasmin Khan
• Amanda Lanzillo
• Maximilian Lau
• Michael Leggiere
• Alastair Lockhart
• Zhouxiang Lu
• Tosca Lynch
• Kirsten Macfarlane
• Daniel Mandur Thomaz
• Clement Masakure
• Martha McGill
• Alessia Meneghin
• Daniele Miano
• Alex Middleton
• Stephen Milner
• Georgina Mary Montgomery
• Jessica Moody
• Francesco Morriello
• Laurence Mussio
• Delfi Nieto-Isabel
• Niall Oddy
• Annebella Pollen
• Jason Price
• Rebecca Probert
• Matthew Reeve
• Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen
• Gwen Seabourne
• Kate Strasdin
• Dan Taylor
• Paul Thomas
• Liz Tregenza
• Jim van der Meulen
• Brian Varian
• Kate Vigurs
• Tiffany Watt Smith
• Hope Williard
• James  Wilson
• Marcus Wuest

New Associate Fellows, elected May 2024

• David Ashton
• Polly Bird
• James Brocklesby
• Guy Bud
• Erica Canela
• Gavin Chiu
• Silvia Cinnella Della Porta
• Daniel  Clinkman
• Rachel Dishington
• Sarah Dixon Smith
• Paul Finegan
• Adam Frost
• John Joseph Gallagher
• Elizabeth Goodwin
• Zachris Haaparinne
• Nitin Hadap
• Paul Hamilton
• Brittany Hanlon
• Jack Hayes
• Zoe Hendon
• Linsey Hunter
• Li Jiang
• Philip John
• Daniel Johnson
• Elizabeth Jones
• Alice Kinghorn
• Aileen Lichtenstein
• Robin Lucas
• Cathleen Mair
• Peter McDonald
• Ciara Molloy
• Kellie Moss
• Ellie Munro
• Steve Ngo
• Neil O’Docherty
• Femi Owolade
• Joanna Phillips
• Catherine Phipps
• Chelsea Reutcke
• Joshua Rushton
• Amy Saunders
• Saptarshi Sengupta
• Olasupo Shasore
• Mark William Shearwood
• Chris Shoop-Worrall
• Timothy Slonosky
• Samuel Teague
• Takao Terui
• Jane Thick
• Connie Thomas
• Kate Tilson
• Charlotte Tomlinson
• George Townsend
• Benjamin Turnbull
• Jessica Venner
• Emily Vincent
• Bo Yan
• Robert Andrew Yee
• Jinming Yi

New Members, elected May 2024

• Ramy Abaker
• Judith Anderson
• Thomas Barber
• Geof Bassford
• Nwakasi Belisle-Nweke
• Alexandre Berard
• Amber Blackburn
• Roisin Blackmore
• Tara Bradford
• Mark Brandon
• Perry Brown
• David Chalmers
• Donald Clark
• Ryan Cudworth
• Paul Duncanson
• Theresa Dunthorne
• Owain Franks
• Elizabeth Goodwin
• Lloyd Griffiths
• Boris Habric
• Stuart Hall
• Douglas Hamilton
• Samridh Joshi
• Chad Jude
• Thomas Kelley
• Elspeth King
• Alan Kunna
• Edward Leane
• Chan Io Lei
• Victoria Lister
• Peter Littke
• Rachel Martin
• Jason McArthur
• Amy McElroy
• Mercedez Mendy
• Niels Noordstar
• Ashley Pegler
• Shona  Penfold
• Lee Porter
• Pranav Prakash
• Rhys Prosser
• Samuel Reeve
• Richard Reger
• Molly Reid
• Jan Robinson
• Owen Rutherford
• Shona Rutherford-Edge
• Sharada Sampathkumar
• Christian Say
• Anne Mary Shaju
• Imam Daniel Sihombing
• Edward Skeel
• Neil. Smith
• J. Soames
• Derek Turner
• Gregory Tysall
• Carol Whatling
• Ben Wheeler
• Martin  Whincup
• Charles Wytrychowski IV

New Postgraduate Members, elected May 2024

• James Adams
• Paul Aitchison
• Bushra Alhuzili
• Emma Arthur
• Christopher Barnes
• Lucy Barratt
• Sean Barrett
• Emma Bashforth
• Lucy Beall Lott
• Meghmala Bhattacharya
• Jessica Bonfils
• Howard Bowen
• Joe Broderick
• KatilynBrown
• Kathryn Bruce
• Nicole Burnett
• James Burns
• Finn Cadell
• Isla Cartney
• Chloe Challender
• Daisy Chinghoihkim
• Sarah Cooley
• Thomas Cripps
• Lily Davis
• Christopher Day
• Ali Din Din
• Olivia Dunderdale
• Simon Edwards
• María Fernández-Portaencasa
• Cameron Flint
• Shushun Gao
• Ariel Giuliano
• Molly Groarke
• Faiq Habash
• Trent Harron
• Rachael Haslam
• Myya Helm
• Jane Hibbert-Nicolov
• Rosalind Hodgson
• Isabelle Hollingdale
• Frederick Hyde
• Kshitij Jain
• Joanne Kenyon
• Michelle Kiessling
• Aymeric Lamy
• Peihang Li
• Diane Elizabeth Huntington  Loring
• Aoife Maher
• Rebecca Maitland
• Tatenda Mashanda
• David McBride
• Hannah Lucy McCullough
• Eleanor McDonald-Dick
• Alice McKimm
• Chris McNulty
• Joshua Melen
• Michelle Michel
• Benhilda Mlambo
• Abraham Murad
• Nicole Musson
• Christopher Owen-Smith
• Yuxi Pan
• Cody Parker
• Florian Probst
• Prapya Putatunda
• Richard Pym CBE
• Bala Ambicanadh Raasamsetty
• Wajid Abbas Rather
• Adam   Rowles
• Madiha Zeb Sadiq
• Heather Sadiq
• Ruadhan Scrivener-Anderson
• Aniya Selvadurai
• Dipanshu Shekhar
• John Simlett
• Andrew Simpson
• Eden Smith
• Viktoria Maria Sochor
• Julian Sproule
• Aaron Stark
• Maya Sternthal
• Shiuli Sural
• Stephen Symchych
• Lucy Thompson
• Brittany Thompson
• Natalia Tomashpolskaia
• Thomas Tyson
• Anastasios Vavalis
• Ching-Ming Wang
• Zhaoting Justin Wei
• Arina Zarei
• Shuai Zhang

 

HEADER IMAGE: Roman alphabet against architectural backgrounds, from G. P. Zanotti’s Il Claustro di San Michele in Bosco di Bologna, Pio Panfili Italian, 1776, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, public domain.

 

 

The 2024 RHS Prothero Lecture will reflect ‘On the Challenges and Purposes of Global History’ with Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History at the University of Oxford. Booking for the lecture, which takes place at 6.30pm BST on Wednesday 3 July in central London and online, is now open for in-person and online attendance. All are welcome.

The Prothero Lecture is one of the high points of the Society’s annual events programme. It is followed by our annual summer party to which all attendees are very welcome. The party is an opportunity to meet fellow historians and members of the Society’s governing Council.

In this year’s Prothero Lecture, Peter Frankopan will ask what is global history; should historians think globally – and is it even possible to do so? How does macro-history fit alongside microhistories and regional and periodic specialisations; and what do these questions mean for the teaching of history at school and university? Professor Frankopan’s lecture will consider problems of traditional periodisation and regionalisation and show how global history can be instructive and helpful from teaching at primary school level to high-level academic research to public history.

About this year’s Prothero Lecturer

Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University, where he is Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. He is also Professor of Silk Roads Studies and a Bye-Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge.

His publications includeThe Silk Roads: A New History of the World (Bloomsbury, 2015), The New Silk Roads: The Future and Present of the World (2018) and The Earth Transformed: An Untold Story (2023). Silk Roads was named The Daily Telegraph‘s History Book of the Year 2015 and was lauded as one of the ‘Books of the Decade’ 2010-20 by the Sunday Times. His latest book, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, was named History Book of the Year by The Times in 2023. His books have have been translated into forty languages.

About the RHS Prothero Lecture

First given in 1968, the Prothero Lecture — named after George W. Prothero (President of the Society, 1901-05) — has featured some of the world’s leading historians. Former Prothero Lecturers include Joanna Bourke, Linda Colley, Roy Foster, Olwen Hufton, Sujit Sivasundaram, Brenda E. Stevenson and Keith Thomas.

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For more on the Society’s events programme in May, June and July, please see here. Forthcoming events include lectures, training workshops and panels discussions.

 

The Royal Historical Society’s recent online introduction to history podcasts (held on 25 April) is now available to watch or listen to as an audio recording. Presented by the experienced podcasters, Bob Nicholson and Dave Musgrove, this presentation and Q&A session explored creating and developing a podcast on a historical topic. Bob and Dave share their considerable experience and emphasize the importance of engaging content and story-telling over hi-tech production values.

Dr Bob Nicholson is a historian based at Edge Hill University who has written and presented items for BBC Radio 4, Radio 3, ‘History Today’, and ‘BBC History Magazine’. Most recently, he wrote and presented the podcast documentary series ‘Killing Victoria’ for BBC Sounds (2023), which explored the lives of seven men who attacked Queen Victoria and reached the top 5 in the UK History charts. Dr Dave Musgrove is content director of ‘BBC History Magazine’ and the HistoryExtra podcast and website.

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Forthcoming training events

 

2pm BST, Friday 14 June 2024 online.

‘Getting Published: A Guide to Monograph Publishing for Early Career Historians’

Speakers: Meredith Carroll (Manchester University Press), Elizabeth Hurren (New Historical Perspectives), Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London) and Jane Winters (Royal Historical Society).

Booking for online attendance at this training workshop is now available.

 

On Friday 3 May the Royal Historical Society hosted the latest in its 2024 series of lectures. Friday’s lecture —  ‘Possible Maps: Ways of Knowing and Unknowing at the Edge of Empire (Newfoundland c. 1763-1829)’ — was delivered by Professor Julia Laite (Birkbeck, University of London).

Julia’s lecture explored official and unofficial, and colonial and Indigenous, ways of mapping and knowing Newfoundland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The island’s foreshores and coastal waters were considered of vital economic and strategic importance to the British, while its hinterland was thought too barren and empty for landward expansion. With the aide of four ‘possible maps’, Julia’s lecture reconsidered the place of this ‘unknown’ island and its difficult history within the British Empire.

Recordings of Julia’s lecture will be available soon.

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Forthcoming lectures and events from the Royal Historical Society

On Thursday 23 May, the Society visits historians at Brunel University. The visit concludes, at 5pm, with a guest lecture by Professor Corinne Fowler (University of Leicester) who will be speaking on ‘Country Walks Through Colonial Britain’.

The lecture, which comes shortly after publication of Corinne’s new book, Our Island Stories. Country Walks through Colonial Britain, will explore the impact and legacy of British colonialism on the British countryside. The lecture is part of Brunel University’s Research Festival and all are welcome to attend. Booking is available here.

Other forthcoming events include training sessions and panel discussions on:

• Getting Published: A Guide to Monograph Publishing (2pm Friday 14 June 2024, online)
• AI, History and Historians: a Panel Discussion (2pm, Wednesday 17 July 2024, online)

 

 

 

On 30 April, the Royal Historical Society held the first in a new series of consultative conversations to consider ‘Doing History in Public’. The series takes the form of evidence-gathering ‘conversations’ — between historians and specialist professionals in related sectors — to identify the resources and guidance most useful to support those ‘doing history in public’.

Three seminars will take place between April and September 2024. Each session will draw on the experience of practitioners working across a range of formats to identify common interests, concerns, priorities and requirements for historians working publicly. From these, the Society looks to develop resources and guidance that will support the practice of public history and the communication of research on public platforms.

The first session in the series, on 30 April, considered Doing History in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. This brought together historians working with institutions in the GLAM sector, with curators, archivists and librarians responsible for academic engagement and collection promotion to a wide range of audiences.

Our panellists represented national museums, research libraries, private collections, and archives within the public sector.

Topics raised in this first conversation included collaborative working between academics and curatorial staff, audience engagement and communication, and the elements of successful and responsible public history.

Participants also began the work of identifying how the Society might best support the profession in Doing History in Public.

The next seminar in the series considers ‘Doing History in Print’, and brings together historians, journalists, and publishers to discuss attendees’ experience (positive and negative) of working with different forms of print media. Further details of the second conversation, which takes place on Thursday 20 June, will be announced shortly.

 

 

Each year, the Royal Historical Society funds four fellowships for current History PhD students to complete their research. Fellowships are intended as writing-up awards for those who can make a clear argument about the need for additional time beyond the three years of doctoral study (or equivalent in the case of part-time or international students with longer programmes of study). Applications are now invited for the RHS Marshall and Centenary Fellowships for the academic year 2024-25.

The 2024-25 Fellowships comprise:

• Two RHS Centenary Fellowships: each Centenary Fellowship runs for 6-months and is worth £8,295 for final-year PhD students to complete their dissertations and to develop their research career.
• Two RHS Marshall Fellowships: each Marshall Fellowship runs for 6-months and is worth £8,295 for final-year PhD students to complete their dissertations and to develop their research career.

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.

All Fellowships are open to candidates without regard to nationality or academic affiliation. They are jointly held with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, where Fellows are based.

For more on the Fellowships and how to apply, please see the IHR website.

Applications should be made via the Institute of Historical Research applications platform.

Fellowships will be awarded to doctoral students who are engaged in the completion of a doctorate in history (broadly defined), on topics from 300AD to the present day. Applicants must 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 international degrees, which may be longer in duration.

The closing date for this year’s RHS Marshall and Centenary PhD Fellowships is Friday 31 May 2024.

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Further research funding from the Royal Historical Society

In addition to the Marshall and Centenary PhD Fellowships, the Society currently welcomes applications for the following funding opportunities:

• Postgraduate Research Support Grants – for History students (who are Postgraduate Members of the Royal Historical Society), currently studying for a Masters degree or PhD. Awards of either £500 or £1000 to support specified research activities. Next closing date for applications: Friday 7 June 2024.
• Early Career Research Support Grants – for early career historians (historians who are within 5 years of having submitted their PhD in a historical subject). Applicants must also be members of the Royal Historical Society. Awards of either £500 or £1000 to support specified research activities. Next closing date for applications: Friday 7 June 2024.
• Martin Lynn Scholarships in African History – to assist a postgraduate researcher of African history. The Scholarship is worth £1,500 and is open to Postgraduate Members of the Royal Historical Society. Next closing date for applications: Friday 6 September 2024.

Applicants for Royal Historical Society funding must be members of the Society, with exceptions for several Postgraduate grants. To find out how to become a Fellow, Associate Fellow, Member or Postgraduate Member, please see our Join Us page.

Enquiries concerning these, and other RHS Research Funding programmes, please contact: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

Full details of all RHS funding programmes, across all career stages, and their availability through the year are available here.

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HEADER IMAGES: Dish with Hydrangeas, Japan, c.1690–1730, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, public domain; Design for a Fruit Plate, anonymous, French, 19th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, public domain