The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the appointment and election of four new members to its governing Council. All four will take up their posts following the Society’s AGM held on 24 November 2023. Their appointments follow open calls, earlier this year, for the new post of Vice President and that of Treasurer; and the recent election of two new Councillors from the Society’s Fellowship.
As Treasurer, Dr John Law will replace Professor Jon Stobart, who steps down in November after his four-year term. As Councillors Professor Mark Knights and Professor Iftikhar Malik replace Professor Barbara Bombi and Professor Thomas Otte who also end their four-year terms in November. From November, Barbara Bombi takes on the post of RHS Secretary for Research and Chair of its Research Policy Committee, replacing Professor Jonathan Morris who steps down after five years in this role.
Professor Clare Griffiths (Cardiff University), Vice President of the Royal Historical Society
Clare Griffiths is Head of History and Professor of Modern History in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University. Prior to taking up her current position in Cardiff, she taught at the University of Sheffield, Wadham College, Oxford, and the University of Reading, and she has held visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Museum of English Rural Life.
Clare’s research focuses on the political and cultural history of Britain in the twentieth century, with a particular interest in the history of the countryside, agriculture and landscape. She is the author of Labour and the Countryside: the Politics of Rural Britain, 1918-1939 (Oxford University Press, 2007) and co-editor of Class, Cultures and Politics (OUP 2011). Her published articles and essays include work on political debates in Britain during the Second World War, the commemoration and historical memory of early nineteenth-century radicalism, and many aspects of British farming and rural life. She has also written extensively for the Times Literary Supplement, particularly on visual art.
Clare was a member of the Society’s Council from 2018 to 2021, during which time she served on, and subsequently chaired the Research Support Committee.
Dr Michael John Law, Treasurer of the Royal Historical Society
John Law was, until his retirement, a Research Fellow in History at the University of Westminster. He joined the academic world later than is usual, completing his PhD when he was 54 years old. John’s work considers the experience of modernity in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. He is the author of several academic books. His latest, A World Away, was published by McGill Queen’s University Press in 2022, and examines the impact of holiday package tours on the people of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. John was a council member and trustee at the University of Sussex from 2011 to 2017.
Prior to academia, John was a partner at PwC and an executive at IBM. In these roles, he provided consulting advice to the world’s largest financial institutions. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant.
Professor Mark Knights (University of Warwick), RHS Councillor
Mark Knights is Professor of History at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on early modern political culture in Britain and its empire, and on the history of corruption.
Mark’s most recent publication is Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and its Empire 1600-1850 (OUP 2021). He is currently working on a cultural biography of a seventeenth-century merchant philosopher; a book charting the history of corruption in Britain and its empire from the 1620s to the 2020s; and the Oxford Handbook of the History of Corruption.
Mark is a member of the editorial boards of Boydell and Brewer’s ‘Eighteenth Century Studies’ series and of the journal Parliamentary History. He has held numerous posts in his department and University.
Professor Iftikhar H. Malik (Bath Spa University), RHS Councillor
Iftikhar H. Malik is Professor-Emeritus at Bath Spa University, where he taught history for 27 years, following his five-year fellowship at St Antony’s College, Oxford. Presently, a member the Common Room at Wolfson College in Oxford, his Curating Lived Islam in the Muslim World: British Scholars, Sojourners and the Sleuths with Routledge came out in June 2021.
In November 2022, his The Silk Road and Beyond: Narratives of a Muslim Historian (Oxford University Press, 2020), received the UBL Award for the best non-fiction work in English in Pakistan.
Iftikhar’s other studies include Pashtun Identity and Geopolitics in Southwest Asia: Pakistan and Afghanistan since 9/11 (Anthem, 2016 & 2017); Crescent between Cross and Star: Muslims and the West after 9/11, (OUP, 2006); and Islam and Modernity: Muslims in Western Europe and the United States (Pluto, 2003).