Statement following the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Patron of the Royal Historical Society

 

The Royal Historical Society is profoundly saddened by news of the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

The Queen was the Patron of the Royal Historical Society and a supporter of its work for 70 years. The Society, past and present, is very grateful to the late Queen for this long and important association. Her Majesty’s death comes three months after the 150th anniversary of the granting of the Royal title to the Society by Elizabeth II’s great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. 

Elizabeth II’s reign spanned a momentous era in British, Commonwealth and world history, during which the Queen provided great constancy and coherence. Today’s sad news marks another significant moment in that history and in the private lives of many who mourn the loss of an individual and a connection with the past.

We are confident historians will serve an important and valued role in documenting, explaining and interpreting this week, and the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II, for present and future generations.

Professor Emma Griffin, President of the Royal Historical Society

 

Precarious Professionals: New Historical Perspectives on Gender & Professional Identity in Modern Britain

 

**PLEASE NOTE: this event has been postponed and will now take place later in the year, date tbc**

 

Book Launch and Panel Discussion

14.00 GMT, Tuesday 22 March 2022, Live online via Zoom

 

 

Published in October 2021, Precarious Professionals is an edited collection of essays which use gender to explore a range of professional careers, from those of pioneering women lawyers and scientists to ballet dancers, secretaries, historians, and social researchers.

The book reveals how professional identities could flourish on the margins of the traditional professions, with far-reaching implications for the study of power, privilege, and expertise in 19th and 20th century Britain.

Precarious Professionals appears in the RHS ‘New Historical Perspectives’ series and is is now available free, Open Access, to read ahead of the event.

 

Contributors to the panel

  • Professor Christina de Bellaigue (University of Oxford)
  • Dr Laura Carter (Université de Paris / LARCA)
  • Professor Leslie Howsam (University of Windsor / Ryerson University)
  • Dr Claire G. Jones (University of Liverpool)
  • Professor Helen McCarthy (University of Cambridge)
  • Professor Susan Pedersen (Columbia University)
  • Dr Laura Quinton (New York University)
  • Professor Emma Griffin (RHS President and University of East Anglia) (chair)

This event brings together seven of the book’s contributors to discuss the relationship between gender and professional identities in historical perspective, and to reflect on researching and writing histories of professional work in precarious times. 

About our panel

Christina de Bellaigue is Associate Professor of History at Oxford and a Fellow of Exeter College. She is a social and cultural historian of nineteenth century France and Britain, with research interests in the history of reading and of education, and of childhood and adolescence. Christina’s current project concerns middle class family strategies and social mobility. Her publications include  Home Education in Historical Perspective (2016) and Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France, 1800–1867 (2007).

Laura Carter is Lecturer in British History at the Université de Paris, LARCA, CNRS, F-75013 Paris, France. She has published articles on popular history, education, and social change in twentieth-century Britain in the journals Cultural and Social History, History Workshop Journal, and Twentieth Century British History. Her first book, Histories of Everyday Life: The Making of Popular Social History in Britain, 1918-1979, was published by Oxford University Press in the Past & Present book series in 2021.

Leslie Howsam is Emerita Distinguished University Professor at the University of Windsor (Canada) and Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Digital Humanities at Ryerson University. She is editor of the 2015 Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book and author of Old Books and New Histories: An Orientation to Studies in Book & Print Culture (Toronto University Press, 2006).    

Claire G. Jones is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Liverpool. Her research interests focus on the cultural and social history of science, from the late-eighteenth century through to the early-twentieth, with special emphasis on femininity, masculinity, inclusion and representation. She has published widely in these areas and co-edited the Palgrave Handbook of Women and Science (2022).

Helen McCarthy is Professor of Modern and Contemporary British History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John’s College. She is a historian of modern Britain and author of three books: The British People and the League of Nations (Manchester University Press, 2011); Women of the World: The Rise of the Female Diplomat (Bloomsbury, 2014); and Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Susan Pedersen is Gouverneur Morris Professor of British History at Columbia University, where she teaches British and International History. Her most recent book is The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford, 2015). She is now writing a book about marriage and politics in the Balfour family. She writes regularly for the London Review of Books.

Laura Quinton is a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at New York University and a Resident Fellow at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU. Her current book project, Ballet Imperial: Dance and the New British Empire, explores the unexpected entanglements of ballet and British politics in the twentieth century. Her writing has appeared in The Historical Journal, Twentieth Century British History, and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism.

Emma Griffin is President of the Royal Historical Society and Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia.

 

HEADER IMAGE, clockwise from top left: politician, Mary Agnes Hamilton, at her desk in Carlton House Terrace, c.1948; sociologist Viola Klein, 1965; historian Dame Lillian Penson running her seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, London, 1957; Marie Stopes in her laboratory, Manchester, c.1904–6; mathematician and engineer, Hertha Ayrton, in her Laboratory; lawyer and political reformer, Eliza Orme, 1889.

 

RHS Lecture and Events: Full Programme for 2022 >

 

In Conversation — Professor Serhii Plokhy, 16 May 2023

 

The Russo-Ukrainian War

Serhii Plokhy in conversation with Sir Richard Evans

 

Professor Serhii Plokhy

(Harvard University)

 

Tuesday 16 May 2023
6.30pm-7.45pm BST – Livestreamed

 

 


About this event

In this special event, Serhii Plokhy, Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, will discuss his new book, The Russo-Ukrainian War, which is published by Penguin on 16 May 2023.

Professor Plokhy will be in conversation with the historian, Sir Richard J. Evans.

The Russo-Ukrainian War is the comprehensive history of a war that has burned since 2014, and that — with Russia’s attempt to seize Kyiv from February 2022 — destroyed the geo-political order in place since the end of the Cold War. Professor Plokhy traces the origins and the evolution of the war: from the collapse of the Russian empire to the rise and fall of the USSR, and on to the development in Ukraine of a democratic politics.

Our event takes place in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute London. The Institute champions Ukrainian culture and shapes the conversation about Ukraine in the UK and beyond. It explores Ukrainian perspectives on global challenges. The UIL is an independent charity registered in England and Wales.

Those joining this livestream of the event will be able to watch the conversation and discussion as it takes place, but we are unable to take questions from the online audience.


Speaker biographies

Serhii Plokhy is Mykhailo S. Hrushevs’kyi Professor of Ukrainian History and Director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. He is one of the most widely known historians working today and the author of numerous studies on the history of Ukraine, modern warfare and the Cold War.

Serhii’s books include Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy (2018), which won the Baillie Gifford and Pushkin House Book Prizes; The Gates of Europe. A History of Ukraine (2015); and Lost Kingdom. A History of Russian Nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin (2017). Professor Plokhy’s extensive work on the history nuclear power and arms include Nuclear Folly. A New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (2021) and Atoms and Ashes. From Bikini Atoll to Fukushima (2022). His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages.


Richard J. Evans is is one of the world’s leading historians of modern Germany. From 2008 to 2014 he was Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University, and from 2010 to 2017 President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He served as Provost of Gresham College in the City of London from 2014 to 2020.

In 2000 Sir Richard was the principal expert witness in the David Irving Holocaust Denial libel trial at the High Court in London, subsequently the subject of his book, Telling Lies About Hitler (2002), and the film Denial. Sir Richard’s many books include Death in Hamburg. Society and Politics in the Cholera Years 1830-1910 (winner of the Wolfson History Prize in 1989); In Defence of History (2001); and the trilogy: The Coming of the Third ReichThe Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at War (2003-08).

Sir Richard’s The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 (2016), is volume 7 of the Penguin History of Europe, and was published in 2016. His most recent books include Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History (2019) and The Hitler Conspiracies: The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination (2020). In 2012 he was knighted for services to scholarship.


Watch the recording of this event >

 

More on the Royal Historical Society’s events programme, 2023 >

 

External Events Listings

In addition to its own Events programme, the RHS provides listings for a wide range of external events and activities on behalf of the historical community. These external events include conferences, symposia, seminars and lectures, as well as ‘calls for papers’, and prize deadlines.

  • Browse the full listing below or use the navigation to select external events by category.
  • You can submit an event for consideration here, or via the link below.
  • RHS Fellows and Members receive a weekly News Circular (example: 10 August 2023) with details of Society activities and the latest external events.

Please note: listing is not an indication of the Royal Historical Society’s support for an event, and we remind organisers of the recommendations in our 2018 reports on Race, Ethnicity and Equality and Gender Equality: events in the discipline should be diverse and inclusive.

 

Would you like to promote your history event or activity on the Royal Historical Society listing? If so please complete our form via this link.

Submit your notice here

 

 

The Samuel Pepys Award 2021

The Samuel Pepys Award 2021 – Rules

www.pepys-club.org.uk

The Trustees of the Samuel Pepys Award Trust invite submissions for the tenth Samuel Pepys Award, to be presented at the annual Pepys Club dinner on Tuesday 16 November 2021.

The biennial prize of £2,000 is for a book that, in the opinion of the judges, makes the greatest contribution to the understanding of Samuel Pepys, his times or his contemporaries.

 

The first Samuel Pepys Award marked the tercentenary of Pepys’s death in 2003 and was won by Claire Tomalin for her biography, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self.

Subsequent prize winners were:

  • 2005 Frances Harris for Transformations of Love
  • 2007 John Adamson for The Noble Revolt
  • 2009 JD Davies for Pepys’s Navy: Ships, Men and Warfare 1649-1689.
  • 2011 Michael Hunter for Boyle: Between God and Science.
  • 2013 Henry Reece for The Army in Cromwellian England 1649-1660
  • 2015 Paul Slack for The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-Century England
  • 2017 John Walter for Covenanting Citizens: The Protestant Oath and Popular Political culture in the English Revolution
  • 2019 David Como for Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War

A specially cast medal by Philip Nathan, in memory of Robert Latham, joint editor of the eleven-volume The Diary of Samuel Pepys, will be presented to the winning author.

 

The Rules

  1. Submissions must be made no later than Wednesday 30 June 2021.
  2. Books must be published between 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2021.
  3. Submissions, non-fiction and fiction, must have been written in the English language.
  4. Books published in the UK, Ireland, USA and the Commonwealth are eligible for the Samuel Pepys Award.
  5. The judges of the Samuel Pepys Award reserve the right to call in books.
  6. The Samuel Pepys Award will be presented at the annual dinner of the Samuel Pepys Club in London on Tuesday 16 November 2021.

Judges

The judges of the tenth Samuel Pepys Award are:

  • Eamon Duffy is Emeritus Professor of the History of Christianity at Cambridge and the author of numerous books including The Stripping of the Altars and Saints and Sinners, a history of the Popes
  • Sir David Latham is the son of Robert Latham, the editor of the Diary. He is a retired Lord Justice of Appeal and an Honorary Fellow of Royal Holloway College, University of London. He is the current Chairman of the Samuel Pepys Club
  • Robin O’Neill is a former British ambassador, read English at Cambridge and has a particular interest in diplomatic history and English literature in the seventeenth century
  • Caroline Sandwich read English at Cambridge and Middle Eastern politics at London. Has served on the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Historic Houses Association amongst others. Her work at her husband’s family house, Mapperton, has given her an interest in seventeenth century history.
  • Sir Keith Thomas is a Fellow of All Souls and a distinguished historian of the early modern world, whose publications include Religion and the Decline of Magic, and Man and the Natural World.

Submissions

Submissions should be made on the Samuel Pepys Submission Form 2021

Please post completed forms by 30 June 2021 to:

Professor William Pettigrew
4 Regent Street
Lancaster
Lancashire LA1 1SG

And post one copy of each submitted book to the following addresses by 30 June 2021

Professor Eamon Duffy
13 Gurney Way
Cambridge CB42 2ED

Sir David Latham
3 Manor Farm Close
Pimperne
Blandford
Dorset DT11 8XL

Robin O’Neill
4 Castle Street
Saffron Walden CB10 1BP

Caroline Sandwich
Mapperton
Beaminster
Dorset DT8 3NR

Sir Keith Thomas
The Broad Gate
Broad Street
Ludlow SY8 1NJ

 

 

‘New Histories of Neo-Liberalism’: 13 October 2022

 

Panel Discussion

17.00 BST, Thursday 13 October 2022

Watch the recording of this event

 

Speakers at the event

  • Professor James Vernon (University of California, Berkeley)
  • Professor Muriam Haleh Davis (University of California, Santa Cruz)
  • Professor Gary Gerstle FBA (University of Cambridge)
  • Professor Quinn Slobodian (Wellesley College, Massachusetts)
  • Dr Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (University College London)

About the event

Historical studies of neo-liberalism are much in evidence. The early 2020s have seen new monographs, edited collections and journal articles — offering us a growing range of perspectives on this subject. ‘New Histories of Neo-Liberalism’ brings together five historians who’ve made significant recent interventions, with reference to diverse geographies, political structures, chronologies and methodologies. In doing so, the panel will identify and explore a prominent, resonant and much debated theme in historical research.

Working in the UK and United States, our panellists are specialists in the histories of Britain, America and North Africa, as well as in global histories of ideas, and the international reach of Western economic and foreign policy.

‘Neo-liberalism’ offers a broad framework for our panellists’ study of modern political, economic and social history. But it’s equally a subject contested and debated on key points of chronology, political alignment and origin, and its value as a category of historical analysis to explain change over time.

Chaired by Professor James Vernon, this event is an opportunity to discuss shared interests and research in context: to explore areas of common ground, difference, and dispute; to assess the reshaping of national and regional stories when viewed from alternative global perspectives; and to consider what insights we might draw — now and for the future — from new histories of neo-liberalism.

About the panellists

Watch the video

RHS Lecture and Events: Full Programme for 2022 >

 

PhD Fellowships

 

The Royal Historical Society offers 4 annual PhD Fellowships for postgraduate historians in their third year of research at a UK university. The 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.


How to Apply for 2024-25

  • Call for the Fellowships for the academic year 2024-25 will open on 8 April 2024.
  • Centenary and Marshall Fellowships are open to candidates without regard to nationality or current academic affiliation.
  • The Fellowships are awarded to doctoral students who are completing a thesis in history (broadly defined) who have undertaken at least three years’ research on their chosen topic (and not more than four years full-time or six years part-time) at the beginning of the session for which the awards are made.
  • These awards cannot be held in conjunction with any other substantial maintenance grant.

For full information on how to apply for the Centenary or Marshall Research Fellowships and to obtain further guidelines, please go to the IHR Doctoral Fellowships pages.


Centenary and Marshall Fellows, 2023-24

 

Clare V. Church, is an RHS Centenary Fellow held jointly with the Institute of Research, University of London. Clare is a fourth-year PhD researcher at Aberystwyth University, studying within the Department of History and Welsh History under the supervision of Dr Siân Nicholas and Dr Miguel Hernandez. Originally from Canada, Clare completed her Master of Arts at New York University and attained her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Waterloo.

The subject of her doctoral research focuses on the cultural representations of women celebrities, and their subsequent influence on gender roles and national morale throughout the Second World War. Specifically, the project applies the concept of ‘patriotic femininity’ – originally developed by Phil Goodman within the context of British Second World War studies – transnationally, exploring celebrity case studies in the UK, US, and France. Studying the mediated depictions of celebrities like Vera Lynn, the Andrews Sisters, and Joséphine Baker, the project endeavours to understand how the ‘ideal woman’ was framed within these distinct national wartime contexts.

 

Helena Neimann Erikstrup is an RHS Marshall Fellow, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Helena is a fourth-year DPhil student in History of Art at the University of Oxford. Her thesis ‘The Colours of Martinique: The (re)making of the modern Subject in French-Caribbean Art, 1847-1930’ focuses on visual representations of race and ecology made in Martinique as vital sites in which French national identity was negotiated in the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, a period in which the definition of being, and not being, French was redefined. It looks at understudied visual material of lesser-known or completely unknown, sometimes ‘amateur’, artists alongside work of a canonical artist like Paul Gauguin.

By looking at such artists in a relational, non-hierarchical way, Helena’s research navigates the multitude of chromatic explorations done to grapple and reassert racial and environmental control of Martinique in the decades following the 1848 abolition of slavery. The thesis uses colour (as a pigment, a racial marker and visual effect) as the main prism through which engage with the work and the questions they ask.

 

John Marshall is an RHS Centenary Fellow, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. John is a fourth year PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin, having previously obtained a BA and MA from Dublin City University.

John’s research analyses transnational lordship and politics in thirteenth-century Britain and Ireland. John’s thesis focuses on the Marshal earls of Pembroke and lords of Leinster, in particular how their influence on the ‘peripheries’ of the Plantagenet empire in Ireland and Wales brought them influence and patronage at the core. His thesis will also provide the first edition of the partition of the Marshal estates in 1247 after the male line of the family died out.

In addition to his membership with the RHS, John is also an associate member of the AHRC-funded Noblesse Oblige research network and has published on aspects of his research in History: The Journal of the Historical Association (108:382) and Irish Historical Studies (2023).

 

Stefano Nicastro is an RHS Marshall Fellow, held jointly with the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Stefano studied History at the University of Milan and spent a semester abroad in Istanbul at the Yıldız Teknik Üniversitesi via the Erasmus programme. Subsequently, he completed an MSc in Middle Eastern Studies with Arabic at the University of Edinburgh and I further studied Arabic in Egypt at the International House Cairo – ILI.

Stefano is currently a History PhD Student at the University of Edinburgh, working on a thesis entitled, ‘Genoa in the Islamicate Mediterranean: Diplomatic and Economic Relationships between the Genoese and the Qalawunid Sultanate of Egypt and Syria, 1279-1382′. Stefano’s research looks at cross-cultural and trans-regional interactions in the Mediterranean during the later Middle Ages. Specifically, it studies the diplomatic and commercial relationships between the commune of Genoa and the Mamluk sultanate with a focus on the practices and the modality of these trans-Mediterranean exchanges.


HEADER IMAGE: University College London: the main buildings seen from Gower Street. Engraving. Wellcome Collection, public domain

 

 

RHS Lecture — Dr Su Lin Lewis, 16 September 2022

 

 

‘Decolonising the History of Internationalism’

 

 

Dr Su Lin Lewis

(University of Bristol)

 

Friday 16 September 2022
18.00 BST – University College London & Live-streamed

Watch a recording of this lecture

 

Abstract

The history of internationalism has tended to focus on power centres in the Global North – London, Geneva, New York, and Paris – and institutions like the League of Nations, United Nations, and UNESCO.  What happens when we flip our perspective, and view internationalism from the point of view of the decolonising South? What do we get when we shift our focus from world leaders to the internationalism of activists, intellectuals, feminists, poets, artists, rebels, and insurgents operating in Asia and Africa?

Moreover, how are our methods of researching and debating international history – in universities, archives, and conferences in the Global North – structured by economic inequalities, colonial legacies, and visa regimes that limit participation from scholars from the South?

This lecture considers how we might decolonise both the content and the methods of international history, focusing especially on leftist internationalism in the Afro-Asian world.

 

Speaker biography

Dr Su Lin Lewis is Associate Professor in Modern Global History at the University of Bristol. She works on the social history of globalisation, including cosmopolitan port-cities, transnational activist movements, and post-colonial internationalism, with a focus on modern Southeast Asia.

Su Lin’s monograph, Cities in Motion: Urban Life and Cosmopolitanism in Southeast Asia 1920-1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2016) won the Urban History Association’s Prize for Best Book (Non-North America) for 2015-16. She co-led an AHRC-funded research network on ‘Afro-Asian Networks in the Early Cold War’ and is currently an AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellow investigating Socialist Internationalism in the Afro-Asian World.

 

Watch the Lecture

 

 

RHS Lecture and Events: Full Programme for 2022 >

 

‘Scholarly Editing for Historians: an Introduction and Guide to working with Primary Texts’

 

Training Workshop

2pm BST, Tuesday 18 July 2023, Online 

Watch the video of this event (3 videos, including two breakout sessions)

 

Speakers at the event

  • Siobhan Talbott (Keele University and RHS Camden Series Editor)
  • Richard Gaunt (University of Nottingham and RHS Camden Series Editor)
  • Jayne Gifford (University of East Anglia and a recent RHS Camden volume editor)
  • Daniel Patterson (Independent Scholar and a recent RHS Camden volume editor)

 

About the Workshop

The Royal Historical Society has wide-ranging expertise in the scholarly editing of primary sources. Its Camden Series of primary texts now runs to more than 380 volumes, covering source materials for the history of Britain, medieval to modern, and Britons’ engagement overseas.

In this Workshop, the editors of the RHS Camden Series — Richard Gaunt and Siobhan Talbott — will share their extensive experience of producing scholarly editions and working with editors as they prepare primary texts for publication. They’ll be joined by Jayne Gifford and Daniel Patterson who, as a recent contributors to the Camden Series, will share their experience of identifying and producing a scholarly edition.

Part One of the Workshop offers a guide to getting started on a scholarly edition. This will include: advice on how to select a suitable primary source; options for publishing scholarly editions; approaching a publisher, and what to consider when writing a proposal; determining editorial conventions; and writing an introduction for an edition. Part One is open to anyone with an interest in publishing a scholarly edition, or currently at work on a volume.

Part Two will offer more focused guidance for those currently working with a text for publication. In two groups, we will consider, in greater detail, approaches to editing pre-modern and modern texts, with chance to discuss specific examples of attendees’ work of value to the wider group. Attendance at Part Two will be limited to 20 people per session (pre-modern and modern) to allow for a group discussion. Attendees will be invited to submit questions about their work for review in advance of Part Two of the Workshop.

 

About our speakers

  • Richard Gaunt is Associate Professor in Modern British History at the University of Nottingham. With Siobhan, he is a Series Editor for the Royal Historical Society’s Camden Series — a collection of scholarly primary editions, edited by specialist historians. As one of the Series’ Editors, Richard is responsible for modern Camden content, commissioning volumes and working with the volume editor to produce a final edition. A specialist in nineteenth-century political history, Richard is himself the editor of three volumes of the diaries of the Tory politician, Henry Pelham-Clinton, fourth duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, of which the most recent — The Last of the Tories. Political Selections from the Diaries of the Fourth Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, 1839-1850 — was published in 2021. Since 2013 Richard has been co-editor of the journal Parliamentary History.
  • Siobhan Talbott is Reader in Early Modern History at Keele University and, with Richard, is Series Editor for the RHS Camden Series, with responsibility for pre-modern content. Siobhan’s research covers the economic and social history of Britain and the Atlantic World. Her publications include Conflict, Commerce and Franco-Scottish Relations, 1560-1713 and the co-edited Cultural History of Business, Vol. 4: The Age of Enlightenment: 1650-1850. Her current book project is a study of Knowledge, Information and Business Education in the Early-Modern Atlantic World. Siobhan has also published three scholarly editions: The Letter-Book of John Clerk, 1644-45 (2014), the co-edited Letters of Drummer Major James Spens (Northern Studies, 2018) and, most recently, The Letter-Book of Thomas Baret of Norwich: merchant and textile manufacturer, 1672-77, for  the Norfolk Record Society (2021). Her latest project (for the Scottish History Society) is The Letter-book of Alexander Shairp, 1712-1719
  • Jayne Gifford is Lecturer in Modern History and a specialist on British imperial rule in the twentieth century. She is the author of the monograph, Britain in Egypt: Egyptian Nationalism and Strategic Choices, 1919-31 (2019) and the scholarly edition of Sir Earle Page’s British War Cabinet Diary, 1941-42 (2021), co-edited as part of the Society’s Camden Series with Kent Federowich. Jayne is also a member of the Editorial Board for Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.
  • Daniel Patterson is an Independent Scholar and the editor of The Diary of George Lloyd (1642-1718), for the Royal Historical Society’s Camden Series, published in 2022. Daniel is a former Research Fellow in English Literature at the University of Huddersfield.

Watch the recording this event >


About the Camden Series

The Royal Historical Society’s Camden Series is one of the most prestigious and important collections of primary source material relating to British History, including the British empire and Britons’ influence overseas. Each volume is edited by a specialist historian who provides an expert introduction and commentary.

The complete Camden Series now comprises over 380 volumes of primary source material, ranging from the early medieval to late-twentieth century Britain. The full series is available online via Cambridge University Press, providing a rich conspectus of source material for British History as well as insights into the development of historical scholarship in the English speaking world.

Today the Society publishes two new Camden volumes each year in association with Cambridge University Press.


More on the Royal Historical Society’s events programme, 2023 >

 

The Future of History at Roehampton

The Royal Historical Society is shocked and concerned by proposed redundancies and programme closures in History (and across all Arts and Humanities provision) at the University of Roehampton.

The terms of the Roehampton cuts are extensive.

The proposal is to make all 13.6FTE History posts redundant through voluntary or compulsory schemes and to require current staff to reapply for seven newly configured posts. In addition, the University seeks to close its History MA to new entrants from September 2022. If enacted, Roehampton’s cuts to History staffing will, in numerical terms, exceed those undertaken by any UK university in recent years. 

If the Roehampton proposal is extensive, it is also inexplicable.

By any measure, Roehampton is a successful History department. It performs extremely well in the 2022 National Student Survey and Guardian League Table, exceeding many Russell Group institutions. On its website, the University lauds its ‘world-class historians’ who combine academic study with ‘real-world experience’ and skills-building for successful graduate careers. It’s these same members of staff whose posts are now targeted for redundancy.

As in teaching so in research, the Roehampton History department is flourishing. 83% of Outputs were judged as ‘world leading’ (4*) or ‘internationally excellent’ (3*) in the recent REF2021 exercise. This places Roehampton among the UK’s leading post-92 institutions for History. Roehampton’s historians are equally skilled at external grant capture: £1.67mn since 2014—a 550% increase in income generation compared with the previous REF cycle. Roehampton History has already demonstrated considerable growth in research culture since 2014. To squander opportunities for future growth will be a huge waste of talent, reputation and potential in favour of short-term solutions to current concerns.

The University’s stated reasons for cuts are declining student admissions, and its need to restructure degree programmes to meet Office for Students’ markers on graduate employability and professional status. 

The Society finds this explanation unconvincing. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, between 2014 and 2020 recruitment increased at Roehampton by 113% in History, far exceeding the University’s 68% increase across all subjects in this period. Of the 104 institutions in the HESA survey, only two saw a greater increase in FTE enrolments to study History than Roehampton. Likewise, any subsequent small decline in admissions has identifiable and exceptional causes—most notably A-Level grade inflation in 2020 and 2021. 

The University is right to stress the need for History degrees to prepare students for employment in a range of sectors. However, it’s mistaken to argue that Roehampton History must start again with a new degree and job profiles in order to do so. 

As a closer look at Roehampton’s existing History programme makes clear, these priorities are already in place. Skills training and employability are central to History at Roehampton and a feature at all stages of the BA course, including a compulsory module in ‘Applied Humanities: Professional Practice and Placement’. As a result, for 2017-19, 66% of ​​Roehampton History undergraduate leavers were in ‘graduate level’ careers or further study. 

The Royal Historical Society has written to Roehampton’s senior managers to address their presentation of the History department and reasons for cuts. We sincerely hope our communication is read as constructive and the start of dialogue. We hope too that it encourages those charged with university management not to act in haste when considering change. Rather, we invite them to work with the Society, and others, to develop valuable, attractive and sustainable programmes in the humanities, for the longer term. 

It is our great concern that once disbanded—whether to meet short-term financial and strategic goals, or acquiesce to populist swipes at the humanities—centres of expertise like Roehampton History will prove impossible to recreate. This would be a loss we can truly ill afford.

The President and Council of the Royal Historical Society

 


 

Those in UK History departments facing cuts, or concerned about their prospect, are welcome to contact the Royal Historical Society.

Contacts and resources are available in the Society’s new toolkit for ‘Supporting History Teaching and Research in UK Universities’.