New Historical Perspectives (NHP) is the Society’s book series for early career scholars (within ten years of their doctorate), commissioned and edited by the Royal Historical Society, in association with University of London Press and the Institute of Historical Research.

What’s distinctive about New Historical Perspectives?

The NHP series provides extensive support and feedback for authors, many of whom are writing their first monograph having recently completed a History PhD.

Each author in the series receives substantial reports from peer reviewers and series editors; is assigned a contact and ‘mentor’ from the editorial board; and takes part in an Author Workshop to discuss a near complete book with invited specialists. Author Workshops are opportunities to discuss and develop a manuscript with expert readers before submission to the publisher.

Second, all NHP titles are published as free Open Access (OA) editions, eBooks, and in hard and paperback formats by University of London Press. Digital editions of each book increase discoverability and readership. The cost of publishing NHP volumes as Open Access is covered by the series partners, not the author or an author’s academic institution.

New and forthcoming titles in the series

Gender, Emotions and Power, 1750-2020 (November 2023), edited by Hannah Parker and Josh Doble constitutes a timely intervention into contemporary debates on emotions, gender, race and power. This collection considers how emotional expectations are established as gendered, racialised and class-based notions.

The volume explores the ways these expectations have been generated, stratified and maintained by institutions, societies, media and those with access to power.

Designed for Play: Children’s Playgrounds and the Politics of Urban Space, 1840–2010, by Jon Winder (published in July 2024) is the first empirically grounded historical account of the modern playground, drawing on the archival materials of social reformers, park superintendents, equipment manufacturers and architects in Britain and beyond to chart the playground’s journey from marginal obscurity to popular ubiquity.

Children’s playgrounds are commonly understood as the obvious place for children to play: safe, natural and out of the way. But these expectations hide a convoluted and overlooked history of children’s place in public space

Mapping the State. English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act, by Martin Spychal (September 2024), rethinks the 1832 Reform Act by demonstrating how boundary reform and the reconstruction of England’s electoral map by the 1831–32 boundary commission underpinned this turning point in the development of the British political nation.

Drawing from a significant new archival discovery­­—the working papers of the boundary commission—Mapping the State reassesses why and how the 1832 Reform Act passed, and its significance to the expansion of the modern British state (Published online and in print, Summer 2024).

Recent titles in the Series

• Charlotte Berry, The Margins of Late Medieval London, 1430-1540 (February 2022)
• Sarah Fox, Giving Birth in Eighteenth-Century England (April 2022)
• Leo Shipp, The Poets Laureate of the Long Eighteenth Century, 1668–1813 (September 2022)
• Stephen Mullen, The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy: Scotland and Caribbean Slavery, 1775-1838 (November 2022)
• Matthew Gerth, Anti-Communism in Britain During the Cold War. A Very British Witch Hunt (April 2023)

Edited collections in the Series

In addition to monographs, the series also publishes edited collections. NHP collections are collaborations between historians: edited and including chapters by early career scholars, along with essays from more senior historians.

• Antonia Fitzpatrick and John Sabapathy eds., Individuals, Institutions and Medieval Scholasticism (May 2020)
• Fiona McCall ed., Church and People in Interregnum Britain (August 2021)
• Heidi Egginton and Zoe Thomas eds., Precarious Professionals. Gender, Identity and Social Change in Modern Britain (September 2021)
• Alexandra Hughes-Johnson and Lyndsey Jenkins eds., The Politics of Women’s Suffrage. Local, National and international Perspectives (November 2021)
• Peter Collinge and Louise Falcini eds., Providing for the Poor. The Old Poor Law, 1750–1834 (August 2022)

New Historical Perspectives began publishing in late 2019 and a full listing of titles in the series is available from the University of London Press and via JSTOR Open Access Books.

Submitting a proposal

The Series Editors and Editorial Board welcome proposals for new NHP titles via the NHP book proposal form. Proposals may include full-size monographs and edited collections of up to 100,000 words. The NHP series also publishes shorter monographs (50-60,000 words) where this is an appropriate length for a topic. Completed proposal forms should be submitted to the University of London Press Publisher, Dr Emma Gallon: emma.gallon@sas.ac.uk.

Many NHP authors are publishing their first book, and editorial mentoring and Author Workshops are designed to help with the transition from PhD to monograph. Equally, the Series Editors welcome proposals for second books from authors within 10 years of completing their doctorates.

Enquiries about the series

For general enquiries, please email Dr Emma Gallon, Publisher, at University of London Press: emma.gallon@sas.ac.uk.

If you wish to contact the Series’ co-editors directly, please email Professor Elizabeth Hurren (eh140@leicester.ac.uk) or Dr Sarah Longair (slongair@lincoln.ac.uk).

The Royal Historical Society has long provided training and support, especially for post-graduate researchers and historians at the start of their career.

Since 2022, we have dedicated greater attention to providing advice, guidance and networking opportunities for historians at all career stages.

Training Workshops for Professional Development

The Society’s events programme includes a regular series of training workshops looking at specific aspects of careers in History. Forthcoming events in 2023 include:

• ‘Digital History and Collaborative Research: a Practitioners’ Roundtable’ (Tuesday 23 May 2023)
• ‘Your Research and the Media: an Introduction and Guide for Historians’ (Wednesday 21 June 2023)
• ‘Scholarly Editing for Historians: an Introduction and Guide to Working with Primary Texts’ (Tuesday 18 July 2023)

Previous training and career development sessions are available to watch via our Events Archive. These include:

• Getting Published: a Guide to First Articles and Journal Publishing’ (July 2021)
• ‘Creating Public History: a Guide to Co-production and Community Engagement’ (December 2021)
• ‘Applying for your First Job: a Guide to Preparing & Interviewing for a History Teaching Post’ (March 2022)
• ‘Working with History outside Higher Education: a Guide to Professions beyond Academia’ (July 2022)

Mid-Career Conversations for Historians

Starting in February 2023, ‘Mid-Career Conversations for Historians’ provide opportunities for historians in UK HE, who are members of the RHS, to meet and discuss topics of particular relevance to them at mid-career. The programme builds on the Society’s existing work for early career researchers, and follows a series of focus groups — held in 2022 — to consider how we also support colleagues further along in their professional lives.

Topics covered in Conversations between February and November 2023 include: being a historian in a non-History department; starting a new research project at mid-career; ‘becoming a mentor for departmental colleagues’; ‘engaging with other disciplines in your research and teaching’; and ‘undertaking public history and impact’.

HEADER IMAGE: Plaque depicting a pottery workshop, ca. 1882, R. W. Martin and Brothers, Southall, London. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, public domain

The Royal Historical Society represents the interests of History and historians, of all kinds, via a programme of advocacy and policy research. The higher education, publishing, technological and cultural landscapes, within which much of our work is situated, have changed rapidly over the past decade.

The need for historians to be supported, and for History to be understood and practised well, is more important than ever.

Advocacy

The RHS is the UK’s foremost body for supporting the historical profession and championing History as a discipline. The Society’s advocacy work takes place at a range of levels: individual, departmental, sector and disciplinary.

Support for departments

We work closely with individuals and departments who contact us in need of support, through sharing resources, offering expertise and communicating with university senior managers. The Society also makes available and maintains disciplinary information and links via its a toolkit — ‘Supporting History Teaching and Research in UK Universities’ — launched in 2022 and regularly updated.

In addition, the Society runs a programme of Visits to departments across the the UK to meet with historians and discuss matters relating to their institutions and the wider profession. Recent and forthcoming Visits include to the universities of Lincoln, Edge Hill, Kent, Canterbury Christ Church, the Highlands and Islands, and Hertfordshire (2022-23) and York and York St John and Brunel (in Spring 2024). Details of applications for a programme of Visits for 2025-26 will be circulated later this year.

The Society also publishes data relating to the History and the historical profession in UK Higher Education, as generated by external providers. This resource, and the Toolkit, focus particularly on historians and departments facing threats of cuts or closures to academic programmes and staff.

Parliamentary engagement

Since 2023 members of the Society’s Council have met with UK parliamentarians to discuss their concerns about cuts and closures at History departments in UK Higher Education, and the often negative language used to describe the History and other humanities subjects at university. Recent sessions include members of the Commons and Lords, across the parties, and with representatives from the government and shadow front bench, relevant Commons Select Committees, All Party Parliamentary Groups for History and Universities, and the parliamentary secretariat. These meetings continue.

The Society also draws on the experience of its fellows and Members, many of whom have worked with parliamentarians, either to promote the discipline or with reference to the policy applications of their research.

Public statements in support of departments and the discipline

The Society’s latest public statements have focused on cuts and closures at UK History departments — ‘History in UK Higher Education: A Statement from the Royal Historical Society’ — (June 2023), the closure of the MRes in The History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester (September 2023), and the cuts to History and the wider humanities at Oxford Brookes University (December 2023).

Previous statements include the Society’s concern at closures, mergers and contractions of UK History departments, especially at post-92 institutions such as Roehampton and support for historians at Goldsmiths, University of London. Any department that seeks support — for example, with advice on plans to cut or reduce History provision with their institution — may get in touch confidentially with the Society via the President or the Academic Director. Individuals with concerns about the discipline may also contact the Society at any time.

Collaborative work

Where appropriate, the Society collaborates with partner organisations to present a coordinated response. In resisting cuts and closures, the Society works closely with disciplinary organisations such as History UK and the Arts and Humanities Alliance, an association of UK learned societies. Other recent partnerships include the Society’s 2022 Ukraine Scholars at Risk programme, undertaken with other learned societies in History and area studies.

Policy and Research

The Society’s policy and research programme is responsive to the environment in which historians work. Much of this work takes place via established RHS committees that monitor, respond to, and shape developments in the Research environment and culture in Higher Education; History Education and teaching; and Publishing.

In 2021 the Society established a Council post for Professional Engagement, to better support historians (in and outside HE) with training, skills and career development.

Our Equalities work remains of central importance to the Society. Recent initiatives include the creation of a Masters’ Scholarships programme (since 2022) to support students from groups underrepresented in academic History.

The Society has a small but important archive collection which charts the membership and rise of the historical profession, in the UK, over the 19th and 20th centuries. The archive is divided into four collections, each of which has its own catalogue:

• George W. Prothero Papers: relating to the life and work of the historian G.W. Prothero (1848-1922)
• Camden Society Papers: relating to the Camden Society prior to merging with the Royal Historical Society (1838-1897)
• Royal Historical Society Papers: relating to the administration, activities, projects and events of the Society, c.1868-2010s
• Geoffrey Elton Papers: relating the literary papers of the historian Geoffrey Elton (1921-1994)

Each of these collections are housed in the RHS offices at University College London, and are available for consultation by prior arrangement; priority is given to members of the Society at busy times. For enquiries about the collections, please contact: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

Papers from the Society’s George W. Prothero collection.

1. George W. Prothero Papers

The archive’s principal collection relates to the historian, editor and government adviser, George W. Prothero (1848-1922), who was Professor of History at Edinburgh, from 1894, and President of the Royal Historical Society between 1901 and 1905.

In January 2022, the RHS published a new 250-page catalogue to its Prothero collection, which includes personal and professional correspondence, working papers and manuscripts covering the 1860s to the early 1920s. A selection of images from the collection is also available.

EXTENT: 20 boxes

The Prothero Papers catalogue is arranged in 7 series, each covering a different aspect of G.W. Prothero’s life and work:

• Series 1, PP/1: Personal correspondence, 1886-1922.
• Series 2, PP/2: Subject files, 1866-1921, including papers relating to Prothero’s early academic career and publications; among them his papers relating to the British Academy and Presidency of the Royal Historical Society.
• Series 3, PP/3: Correspondence relating to the First World War and its aftermath, 1914-1922, with British, European and American correspondents.
• Series 4, PP/4: Papers relating to historical studies c.1871-1914, including undergraduate and other notebooks, notes for his Creighton Lectures on Napoleon III, and manuscripts on contemporary international relations.
• Series 5, PP/5: Papers relating to the Bibliography of Modern British History including correspondence, notes on British and foreign libraries and archives.
• Series 6, PP/6: Printed papers including newspaper cuttings, scrapbook and articles.
• Series 7, PP/7: Papers relating to the deposit of the Prothero collection with the Royal Historical Society.

You can read more about recent work to re-catalogue and conserve Prothero’s papers, as well as view a selection of images from the seven series.

2. Camden Society Papers, 1838-1897

In June 2022, the RHS published a new 97-page catalogue to its Camden Society Papers collection, which includes administrative papers relating to the management of the Camden Society’s publishing programme of primary historical sources. The collection covers the period to the Camden Society’s merger with the Royal Historical Society, after which the RHS took on responsibility for publishing the Camden Series of scholarly editions.

EXTENT: 5 boxes

The Camden Society catalogue is arranged in 4 series, covering a different aspect of the Society’s work:

• Ref: CS/1: Papers relating to minute books.
• Ref: CS/2: Administrative papers.
• Ref: CS/3: Correspondence.
• Ref: CS/4: Miscellaneous research materials.

3. Royal Historical Society Papers, 1868-2010s

In October 2022, the RHS published a new 165-page catalogue to its Royal Historical Society Collection Papers, which includes items relating to administration, governance, committee structure, financing, membership, events and activities of the Society from its foundation in 1868 to the 2010s.

EXTENT: 29 boxes, 142 bound volumes, 36 framed photographs and drawings

The RHS Collection catalogue is arranged in 14 series, each covering a different aspect of the Society’s organisation and work:

• Ref: RHS/1: Minutes, agenda and attendance books of Council and various Committee meetings.
• Ref: RHS/2: Financial and administrative records.Ref: RHS/3. Correspondence and related papers.
• Ref: RHS/3: Correspondence and related papers.
• Ref: RHS/4: Research materials and deposited manuscripts.
• Ref: RHS/5: Fellowship, Associate and membership records.
• Ref: RHS/6: British National Committee papers.
• Ref: RHS/7: Invitations, lecture cards, meeting cards, Session cards, By-law booklets, prospectuses and other printed material.
• Ref: RHS/8: Printed circular notices and information booklets issued by the Society.
• Ref: RHS/9: Newsletters and Letters from the President.
• Reg: RHS/10: Offprints and photocopies of reviews of Studies in History articles.
• Ref: RHS/11: Drawings and photographs.
• Ref: RHS/12: Card index of Royal Historical Officers.
• Ref: RHS/13: Maps and plans.
• Ref: RHS/14: Signage.

In addition, application records are available for RHS Fellows from 1887, providing biographical details and insights into professional associations of historians elected to the Society in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Other records relating to the Society are included in the papers of Charles Rogers (1825-1890), who founded the RHS in 1868 and served (controversially) as its secretary until forced to resign in 1881.

4. Geoffrey Elton Papers, and other named collections

In August 2022, the RHS published a new 63-page catalogue to its Geoffrey Elton collection, which includes personal and professional correspondence, relating to the literary works and estate of Geoffrey Elton (1922-1994), historian and President of the Society (1973-77).

EXTENT: 18 boxes

The Geoffrey Elton catalogue is arranged in 4 series:

• ELT/1: Correspondence with the Royal Historical Society
• ELT/2: Correspondence and other papers concerning published works written or edited by G. R. Elton
• ELT/3: Correspondence and other papers relating to articles and reviews
• ELT/4: Concerning publications written or edited by G. R. Elton

Other smaller named collections held by the Society include:

• Papers of Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1829-1902), historian: transcripts of publications and some personal correspondence
• Papers of Frederick Solly Flood (1801-1888), diplomat: unpublished manuscripts
• Records of the British National Committee of the International Committee of Historical Sciences: correspondence etc, 1972-1993

Book Launch and Panel Discussion

Friday 18 February 2022

Watch the recording of this event

Published on 1 February 2022, Simon P. Newman’s Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London uncovers the true extent of slavery in 17th-century England through the hidden stories of enslaved and bound people in London.

Simon’s book is now available free, Open Access, to read ahead of the event.

Speakers at the event

• Professor Simon P. Newman (University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Glasgow)
• Professor Corinne Fowler (University of Leicester)
• Professor Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
• Professor Emma Griffin (RHS President and University of East Anglia (chair)

Freedom Seekers demonstrates not only that enslaved people were present in Restoration London but White Londoners of this era were intimately involved in the construction of the system of racial slavery, a process that traditionally has been regarded as happening in the colonies rather than the British Isles. An unmissable and important book that seeks to delve into Britain’s colonial past.

About our panel

• Simon P. Newman is Emeritus Professor of History, University of Glasgow, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Research in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2022 Simon is visiting scholar at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. Simon’s recent research has focused on runaway slaves in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English Atlantic world, of which his new book, Freedom Seekers, forms part. Simon is also a founding editor of New Historical Perspectives, the RHS Open Access book series for Early Career Historians.
• Corinne Fowler is Professor of Post-Colonial Literature at the University of Leicester and Director of Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted — a child-led writing and history project exploring the African, Caribbean and Indian connections at 11 of National Trust properties. Corinne is an expert in the legacies of colonialism and post-colonialism to literature, heritage and representations of British history. Her latest book is Green Unpleasant Land. Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections (2020).
• Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is the Paul Murray Kendall Chair in Biography, and Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Gretchen is a specialist in Black British studies and the author of Britain’s Black Past (2020), was based on the BBC Radio 4 series of the same title, in addition to earlier titles including Mr and Mrs Prince (2013), Black Victorians, Black Victoriana (2003) and Black London. Life Before Emancipation (1995).
• Emma Griffin is President of the Royal Historical Society and Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia

Watch the recording of this event

RHS Lecture and Events: Full Programme for 2022 >

**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 >

An RHS Online Training Workshop for Early Career Historians

Tuesday 8 March 2022

Watch the recording of this event

‘Applying for your First Job: a Guide to Preparing and Interviewing for a History Teaching Post’ is the next in the Royal Historical Society’s series of online training events designed for early career historians.

In ‘Preparing and Interviewing for a History Teaching Post’ we’ll provide a practical, step-by-step guide to applying for teaching positions in History at UK universities. The Workshop will cover how to prepare for the academic job market, and what to do while you’re researching your PhD; and how best to present yourself — in writing, online and in person — for a specific application and interview.

The Workshop brings together historians from UK universities with extensive experience of seeking and recruiting new academic staff, both for fixed-term and permanent teaching posts. Panellists will offer advice on what a department seeks, and what makes for a strong application and interview.

Topics for the Workshop include: when to start thinking about the job market; how best to prepare while researching your PhD (including advice on teaching and publishing); CV writing; submitting a strong application; interviews and presentations on the day; and what happens next.

The Session will also consider the current state of the UK job market in History, and its possible future development; what departments seek when they create a vacancy; and — importantly — History vacancies and applications from the perspective of Heads of Department and hiring committees.

Our panellists bring experience of working in a range of universities, with advice focused on applying for teaching posts in the UK. We intend to return to ‘applying for a research position’ in a later Workshop session.

After contributions from the panel, the event will take the form of a discussion involving all attendees. Those attending will be invited to submit questions in advance of the Workshop.

About our panel

Elaine Chalus is a historian of English social and political history in the long eighteenth century with a particular interest in the interplay of gender and politics. Elaine joined the University of Liverpool in 2016 as its new Head of Department following an earlier teaching career at Bath Spa University.

As a historian, Elaine has extensive experience of mentoring PhD researchers as they prepare for academic careers. As a Head of Department, Elaine will also offer insight into the application process from the perspective of those seeking to hire new teaching staff.

Matthew Johnson is a historian of modern Britain with a specialism in the impact of war on politics and society, and in militarism as a political and ideological phenomenon in Britain during the twentieth century. At Durham Matthew serves as the History department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies and has extensive experience of candidate shortlisting and interviewing.

Julian Wright is Deputy Faculty Pro-Vice Chancellor for the Faculty of Arts Design and Social Sciences, having been Head of Northumbria’s Department of Humanities since 2017. A historian of modern Europe, Julian taught previously for 13 years at Durham University.

As a Head of Department, Julian has similarly extensive experience of career preparation and planning in History, and of academic applications. In January 2022 Julian joined the RHS Council as its new Secretary for Professional Engagement, and will oversee the Society’s work to promote career development and networking for historians at all career stages.

Emma Griffin is President of the Royal Historical Society in which role she is in regular contact with History Heads of Department across the UK.

As Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia, Emma also has wide experience of departmental management, student mentoring, and the recruitment of new early career teaching staff. Emma researches the social and economic history of Britain during the period 1700-1870, with a particular interest in gender history, the industrial revolution, and working-class life.

Watch the recording of this event

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About RHS Training Workshops

‘Applying for your First Job’ is the next in a new series of RHS ‘Getting Started’ training events for early career historians. Events will provide guidance and insight into key areas of professional development. Details, and videos, of the first workshops in the series — on publishing a first article and creating a public history project — are available here.

The ‘Getting Started’ series runs three times a year with the next session — on finding employment in History outside academia  — to take place on 14 July 2022.