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 >

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).

**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 >

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