Events Archive

RHS / GHIL Global History Lecture 2025: ‘Raise, Reuse, Recycle: Global History and Marine Salvage in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century’

About the event

Oceans and seas have long been a focal point in historiography, particularly in the field of global history, which emphasises the connective power of these vast bodies of water.

This focus naturally extends to the study of seafaring, shipbuilding, and maritime infrastructures. Yet while global history highlights oceanic linkages, it has also acknowledged the inherent dangers and uncertainties of seafaring, from the so-called Age of Exploration through to the twentieth century. Shipwrecks—ranging from minor groundings to catastrophic maritime disasters —have always played a central role in maritime history. Historians of this field have recognised the disruptive effects of these wrecks and have examined the development of maritime security and insurance systems designed to mitigate risks, safeguarding both passengers and investors alike.

But what of the wrecked ship itself, its lost cargo, and the tragic fate of its crew? What about the environmental or navigational hazards posed by these wrecks? And what of the symbolic weight that many sunken ships carry? This talk turns the spotlight on marine salvage and its significance in global history. Salvage operations, as ancient as seafaring itself, primarily aim to recover valuable resources or clear hazardous wreckage. At times, they also seek to uncover the causes of maritime accidents or to retrieve vessels of particular symbolic importance. Salvage work is a complex endeavour, fraught with nautical, technical, environmental, and legal challenges. Studying this practice offers valuable insights into the intricate dynamics of global connections and disconnections—insights this 2025 RHS / GHIL Global History Lecture aims to explore.

Speaker

Roland Wenzlhuemer is Professor for Modern History at the University of Munich and one of the directors of the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect. His research focuses on global and colonial history. He has conducted studies on nineteenth-century colonial export economies, the history of global communication networks, and the history of shipping.

Listen to the lecture

An audio recording of ‘Raise, Reuse, Recycle: Global History and Marine Salvage in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century’ is available here via the German Historical Institute, London’s podcast.

 

 

RHS President’s Address: ‘War and Peace: Mass Observation, 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 Public History Lecture — ‘Why Writing Women Back into History Matters’

‘Why Writing Women Back into History Matters’, with Janina Ramirez

Royal Historical Society 2024 Public History Lecture
on 5 November 2024

Abstract

The Society’s 2024 Public History Lecture, held in association with Gresham College, is given by the historian and broadcaster Professor Janina Ramirez. In this lecture Janina reveals the considerable influence and power held by medieval women and sheds light on the gradual erosion of female agency over subsequent centuries. Through their rediscovery, it interrogates traditional historical narratives and constructs more nuanced, inclusive accounts that reflect the richness, complexity and diversity of the past.

 

 

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)

 

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

 

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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

 

 

 

 

Audio and video recordings of the Caroline’s lecture are now available.

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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.