Events Archive

RHS President’s Address: ‘War and Peace: Mass observations, memory and the ends of the Second World War in Britain”

About the event

Why does the Second World War continue to have such a hold over the popular imagination in early 21st century Britain? From Brexit to Covid, sporting competitions to environmental disasters, many public events are understood through reference to the Second World War and in particular the ‘signal events’ of 1940: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. Unlike the First World War, the memory of this second conflict is largely positive, focused on an imagined past in which people came together in adversity, overcoming the divisions of social class, political belief, and economics that had so divided 1930s Britain to defeat- against the odds – a powerful and ambitious enemy. In short, the Second World War is still widely remembered as Britain’s ‘finest hour’.

In this talk, Lucy Noakes will outline the history of this memory and argue that it has a particular resonance in times of turmoil and instability. Looking back at the ways Mass Observers were beginning to construct a memory of the war as it came to an end, in similarly uncertain times, this talk explores the ways in which people make use of the past in order to understand their presents.

Speaker:

Lucy Noakes is incoming President of the Royal Historical Society (November 20424) and Professor of History at the University of Essex. Her research focuses on social and cultural history of early to mid 20th century Britain, with a particular interest in the experiences and memories of those who experienced the First and Second World Wars.

Her most recent publication is entitled War and the British: Gender, Memory and National Identity 1939-1991. Revised Edition (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). She is also the author of Dying for the Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain (Manchester University Press, 2020), which won the Social History Society Book Prize in 2022, and an edited collection entitled Total War: An Emotional History (OUP, 2020), which considers ‘sentimentality’ and war memories.

 

Audio and video recordings of the panel event are now available.

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RHS Panel Event: ‘Histories of the British Political Left’

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.

Speakers:

  • Professor Laura Beers (American University)
  • Dr Lyndsey Jenkins (University of Oxford)
  • Dr Colm Murphy (Queen Mary University of London)
  • Professor Andrew Thorpe (University of Leeds)
  • Chair: Professor Clare Griffiths (Cardiff University)

 

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RHS Lecture: ‘How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe’

‘How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe’

 

RHS Lecture

with Caroline Dodds Pennock

held on 13 September 2024
at the Mary Ward House, London, and online

 

 

 

 

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About the event

This lecture follows the trails of some of the many Indigenous people who travelled to France in the early seventeenth century. These travellers are emblematic of a transitional phase of empire when Indigenous visitors to Europe managed to be both spectacularly exotic and utterly unremarkable, normalised in imperial discourse but astounding on European shores. In this lecture, Caroline Pennock reveals both the ubiquity and spectacle of Indigenous peoples in early seventeenth-century France, showing the ways they were influential from the apex of power to the cracks of imperial politics.

About the speaker

Caroline Dodds Pennock is Senior Lecturer in International History at the University of Sheffield. Her first crossover trade book On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe was published in January 2023 and has been warmly received, being selected as one of the best history books of the year by Smithsonian Magazine, The Economist, BBC History Magazine and others. Caroline is probably best known as the only British Aztec historian, and her first book, Bonds of Blood: Gender, Lifecycle and Sacrifice in Aztec Culture (2008, PB: 2011) won the Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize for 2008.

 

 

‘AI, History and Historians’ Panel Event

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

This panel discussion (held on 17 July 2024) brought together a panel of experts to consider the opportunities and challenges of new AI technology in the field of history. Topics included the use of AI in university assessments, detecting and mitigating dataset biases, environmental impacts of generative AI, and challenges for historians around using AI.

 

 

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With panellists

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

 

RHS Prothero Lecture with Peter Frankopan

About the event

The 2024 Prothero Lecture, given by Peter Frankopan (Oxford), was on the theme ‘On the Challenges and Purposes of Global History’.  Peter asked 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?

The RHS Prothero Lecture was followed, from 8.00pm, by the Society’s Annual Summer Party at Mary Ward House.

About the speaker

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.

Peter is co-host of a new podcast produced by Goalhanger Productions and Wondery alongside Afua Hirsch called Legacy. Launched at the end of 2023, Legacy looks at the lives of some of the extraordinary men and women who have ever lived – and ask whether they have the reputations they deserve.

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.

This event was not recorded.

 

RHS Training Event — ‘Getting Published: A Guide to Monograph Publishing for Early Career Historians’

About the event

‘Getting Published: A Guide to Monograph Publishing’ is an online training event hosted by the RHS designed for early career historians. The focus of this ‘Getting Published’ session is monographs, with specific attention on how to move from a completed PhD to book proposal to a published monograph.

The event brings together publishers, series editors, academics and early career historians. It seeks to demystify the process of monograph publishing and provide practical advice and tips on how best to succeed.

The workshop combines brief presentations on the stages of the publishing process and the experience of getting published. We will include time for active audience participation in which your questions and concerns will be raised and discussed.

Recorded 14 June 2024.

About the speakers

  • Professor Jane Winters (Vice-President, Publications for the Royal Historical Society), chair
  • Meredith Carroll (History Commissioning Editor, Manchester University Press)
  • Professor Elizabeth Hurren (Series Editor for the RHS’s ‘New Historical Perspectives’ book series for early career historians, published by University of London Press)
  • Professor Miri Rubin (Queen Mary University of London)

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RHS Sponsored Lecture: ‘Country Walks Through Colonial Britain’

 

‘Country Walks Through Colonial Britain’

 

RHS Lecture with Professor Corinne Fowler

held on 23 May 2024
at Brunel University London, and online

 

 

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Abstract

The countryside is cherished by many Britons. There is a depth of feeling about rural places: moors and lochs, valleys and mountains, cottages and country houses. Yet the British countryside, so integral to narratives of nationhood and belonging (and also exclusion), is rarely seen as having anything to do with colonialism.

Focusing on the many connections between imperial wealth and British landscapes, this lecture explores how empire affected rural labour and country life. The profits of overseas colonial activities, and the select few who benefited, heralded change which was not merely expressed in the designed landscapes of country estates but also by enclosure, landownership and dispossession. Generally considered separately, this talk considers how these intertwined histories continue to shape lives across Britain today.

Corinne’s lecture is a partnership between the Royal Historical Society and Brunel University. It forms the concluding event in the Society’s day visit to historians at Brunel.

Speaker Biography

Corinne Fowler is Professor of Colonialism and Heritage in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. In 2020 Corinne co-authored an audit of peer-reviewed research about National Trust properties’ connections to empire, which became a major news story. The report won the Museums and Heritage Judges’ Special Recognition Award 2022, and the Eastern Eye Community Engagement Award , in 2023.

Between 2018 and 2022, Corinne directed Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted, a child-led history and writing project with 100 primary pupils and commissioned writers. Her recent publications include Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections (2020, Peepal Tree Press) and Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain (Penguin Allen Lane: May 2024).

 

RHS Lecture: ‘Possible Maps: Ways of Knowing and Unknowing at the Edge of Empire (Newfoundland, c. 1763-1829)’

‘Possible Maps: Ways of Knowing and Unknowing at the Edge of Empire (Newfoundland, c. 1763-1829)’

 

RHS Lecture with Professor Julia Laite

held on 3 May 2024
at the Mary Ward House, London, and online

 

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Abstract

Consigned to the cold and watery edge of empire, Newfoundland was more of a work-camp than a colony. To the colonial officials in their mahoganied offices in London and the merchants in their mansions in Poole, the island was (in the words of Patrick O’Flaherty) a ‘a sub-colonial fishing berth, an outlying cod abattoir’.

The interior was thought too barren and empty for landward expansion, but its foreshores and coastal waters were of vital economic and strategic importance to the British Crown, and this created a unique form of negligent colonization, which produced one of the Empire’s oldest and most isolated settler populations and led to one of its most totalizing genocides.

This lecture will examine some official and unofficial, and colonial and Indigenous, ways of mapping and knowing this hinterland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and will reconsider the place of this ‘unknown’ island and its difficult history within the British Empire.

Speaker Biography

Julia Laite joined Birkbeck in 2010 after holding postdoctoral fellowships at Memorial University of Newfoundland and McGill University, Canada. Her research examines the history of migration, gender, sex and crime, as well as family history, creative history and public history. She is the author of The Disappearance of Lydia Harvey (2021), Wolfenden’s Women (2020), and Common Prostitutes and Ordinary Citizens (2012), and was principal investigator of the AHRC-funded project ‘Trafficking Past’. Her current work examines critical family history, settler colonialism and migration, and she currently holds an ISRF Mid-Career Fellowship to pursue a new book project.

 

RHS Workshop – ‘Podcasting History’

‘Podcasting History: An Introduction and Guide’, 25 April 2024

 

 

Podcasting History: 25 April 2024 Podcasting has recently emerged as one of the most popular formats for presenting history to the public. But what makes for a compelling history podcast? And how are these podcasts made? This session features two perspectives on the podcast-making process. Dr Bob Nicholson, writer and presenter of the 7-part podcast series ‘Killing Victoria’ (BBC Sounds, 2023), outlines how the series was made and what he learned about the art of developing a documentary-style podcast. Bob walks you through the process of scripting the series, identifying locations/interviews, recording segments, and then editing everything together.

Dr Dave Musgrove launched, produces and co-presents the long-running HistoryExtra podcast. His part of the session builds on Bob’s series scripting advice and then talk about building a podcast presence and identifying a likely audience, how to make interviews work, and ways to really harness the power of podcasting as a tool to spread the word about your research.

Speakers

  • Dr Bob Nicholson is a historian based at Edge Hill University. He works on the history of nineteenth-century popular culture, and is particularly keen on unearthing surprising new stories about the Victorians. He 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. His PhD was in medieval archaeology, and he has worked for ‘BBC History Magazine’ for over 20 years. He has written popular history books on British heritage and the Bayeux Tapestry, He launched the HistoryExtra podcast in 2007 and has worked on it ever since. This online event was hosted by Dr Andrew Smith (Queen Mary University of London) and a Council member of the Royal Historical Society.

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RHS Panel – ‘Finding the Funny in Public History’

‘Finding the Funny in Public History’

In conversation with Greg Jenner

 

Greg Jenner

in conversation with Emma Griffin
held on 2 February 2024
at the Mary Ward House, London, and online

 

 

 

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Abstract

One of the UK’s best known public historians, Greg has brought history to new audiences through his engagement with popular culture. In ‘Finding the Funny in Public History’, Greg discussed his approach to communicating history, via different broadcast technologies, and also through comedy which is a common theme in his public history. As Greg shows with reference to his own work, the relationship between historical subject, medium and format is key for effective engagement with a chosen audience. How these elements are chosen and combined is an essential part of a series’ success or otherwise.

As well as drawing on Greg’s own work and approach, our event also considered popular media more broadly as a vehicle for public history. How can formats constrained by running times, deadlines and budgets reflect the balance and nuance required of effective historical work? What is the place of the trained historian in popular media representations of the past? And what are the possible formats by which future audiences will engage with historical subjects? On Tuesday 20 February, Greg was in conversation with Emma Griffin, President of the Royal Historical Society.

Speaker Biography

Greg Jenner is a public historian, author, and broadcaster well known for his work in podcasts, radio, TV, and publishing. He is the host and creator of the chart-topping comedy BBC podcast You’re Dead to Me, as well as the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Past Forward: A Century of Sound, the BBC’s award-nominated children’s podcast Homeschool History, and the Audible series A Somewhat Complete History of Sitting Down. From 2008-2019, Greg was responsible for the research and historical accuracy of the BBC’s multiple-BAFTA and EMMY-award-winning TV comedy sketch series Horrible Histories, and its BAFTA-nominated spinoff film Horrible Histories: The Movie – Rotten Romans.

Greg’s publications include Ask A Historian: 50 Surprising Answers to Things You Always Wanted to Know (2021) and Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity, From Bronze Age To Silver Screen (2020). His bestselling illustrated children’s book You Are History: From the Alarm Clock to the Toilet, the Amazing History of the Things You Use Every Day was published in 2022, and his new children’s book series ‘Totally Chaotic History’ – cowritten with expert historians – will be published by Walker Books in 2024. In 2021 Greg was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society for his contribution to historical scholarship and understanding.