Professor Linda Colley – RHS Prothero Lecture 2020

“What happens when a Written Constitution is printed? A History across Boundaries”

 

Professor Linda Colley FBA
Tuesday 8 December 2020

 

 

 

Watch the Lecture

 

Abstract

From 1750 onwards, the rate at which new constitutions were generated in different countries and continents markedly increased. By the First World War, written and published political devices of this sort already existed in parts of every continent barring Antarctica.

Yet for all the magnitude and diversity of this transformation, the history of written constitutions is often rigidly compartmentalized. Although constitutions spread rapidly across the world’s oceans and land frontiers, they have usually been examined only in the context of individual countries. Although they have been – and occasionally and arguably still are – tools of empire, they are generally interpreted only in terms of the rise of nationalism.  And although these are authored texts, and many of those designing them in the past were engaged in multiple forms of writing, written constitutions have rarely attracted the attention of literary scholars. Instead, these documents have tended to become the province of legal experts and students of constitutional history, itself an increasingly unfashionable discipline in recent decades.

In this lecture, Linda Colley looks at the dense, vital and varied links between constitutions and print culture as a means of resurrecting and exploring some of the trans-national and trans-continental exchanges and discourses involved. She also considers the challenges posed to written constitutions – now embedded in all but three of the world’s countries – by the coming of a digital age.

 

Linda Colley is Shelby M.C.Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University. She was born in the UK, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. She is the author of six books and holds seven honorary degrees. Her latest work, The Gun, the Ship and the Pen: Warfare, Constitutions and the Making of the Modern World, was published in March 2021.

 

Header Image Credit: Photo by Kim Ludbrook/EPA/Shutterstock (8600528a)A member of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party holds a copy of the constitution during a mass protests to the Union Buildings calling for President Zuma to step down, Pretoria, South Africa, 12 April 2017.

Music Credit, closing panel of lecture: 'Dance Of Lovers' Jay Man - OurMusicBox http://www.youtube.com/c/ourmusicbox

 

 

Royal Historical Society Prize Winners, 2023

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the winners of its Gladstone and Whitfield book prizes, and the Alexander article prize, for 2023.


RHS Gladstone Prize, 2023

Awarded to a first book in the field of European or World History.

 

 

Jennifer Keating, On Arid Ground: Political Ecologies of Empire in Russian Central Asia 

(Oxford University Press)

 

 

 

Judges’ citation

Jennifer Keating’s On Arid Ground is a path-breaking study of the way empire and environment interacted in Central Asia through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

This book innovates on a number of fronts, not least by showing the importance of ecology and environment in forcing the Russian Empire to adapt its long-term geopolitical strategy. It significantly changes the way we think of Russian Empire-building and outlines a fascinating picture of land reclamation, settlement and commodity development, while often putting to the fore actors beyond the human, from sandstorms to termites.

Inspiring and important, it will be influential for historians working on other imperial contexts, and above all for our thinking about environment and human social and political organisation today.

 


RHS Whitfield Prize, 2023

Awarded to a first book in the field of British or Irish History.

 

 

Síobhra Aiken, Spiritual Wounds. Trauma, Testimony & the Irish Civil War

(Irish Academic Press)

 

 

 

Judges’ citation

Síobhra Aiken’s Spiritual Wounds offers a fascinating approach to understanding testimonies of the Irish Civil War, revealing through a range of sources what has remained ‘hidden in plain sight’. It challenges the prevailing idea of an enduring silence about the conflict which has sought to forget in order to repair rather than to remember in order to bear witness and grieve.

Through works of autobiography, memoir and fiction in a variety of forms, Aiken explores the manner in which the terrible experiences of war were placed into the public domain by pro- and anti-Treaty men and women, and thus became part of the cultural milieu in the decades that followed.

The book shows how the code of silence around the Irish Civil War was culturally constructed, and it adopts and historicises the framework of ‘trauma’ for its study, offering a model for others to follow. Aiken’s afterword presents fascinating comments on the researcher’s own subjectivity, and the challenges of writing about topics which ‘defy straightforward empathic identification’. It is a powerful contribution to our understanding of the legacy of war, and of historical practice and the role of the historian.

 


RHS Alexander Prize 2023, joint winners

Awarded for an article by an early career historian writing, or within two years of completing, a History PhD.

 

Jake Dyble, ‘General Average, Human Jettison, and the Status of Slaves in Early Modern Europe’, Historical Journal, 65 (2022), 1197-1220

 

Judges’ citation

Jake Dyble tackles a major question regarding the history of the Transatlantic slave trade: how different was this trade to earlier types of enslavement? This is not only a problem for historians but a key issue in modern political debates—particularly with regard to restorative justice.

Dyble uses an ingenious method to uncover a clear answer to the conundrum. He uses legal cases regarding the jettison of cargo, including living animals or people, to determine that there was a significant shift in attitude towards the enslaved. The panel were impressed with the use of legal history but also the way in which the author was able to make a difficult technical topic comprehensible to non-specialists.

 

Roseanna Webster, ‘Women and the Fight for Urban Change in Late Francoist Spain’, Past & Present (October 2022)

 

Judges’ citation

Roseanna Webster’s work on Francoist Spain is a classic account of history from below. She focuses on female activists in new housing estates whose concerns were to gain the necessities of life, such as a regular supply of running water. Webster’s use of oral histories shows how the role of activist jarred with traditional gender roles, and how this caused the women themselves some unease.

Webster’s unusual choice of subject matter and her careful handling of her source material has produced a nuanced account of life under Franco, which focuses not on soldiers or dissidents but on ordinary women and their ambivalence about their new roles.

 


 

 

Scholarly Editing for Historians: An Introduction and Guide to Working with Primary Texts

RHS Workshop — ‘Scholarly Editing for Historians: An Introduction and Guide to Working with Primary Texts, 18 July 2023

 

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

Part One of the Workshop (Video 1/3) offers a guide to getting started on a scholarly edition. Part Two offers more focused guidance for those currently working with a text for publication. Video 2/3 (‘Pre-1800’) covers working with medieval and early modern texts. Video 3/3 (‘Post-1800’) covers working with modern sources.

Speakers
  • Richard Gaunt is Associate Professor in Modern British History at the University of Nottingham. With Siobhan Talbott, he is a Series Editor for the Royal Historical Society’s Camden Series — a collection of scholarly primary editions, edited by specialist historians.
  • 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.
  • Jayne Gifford is Lecturer in Modern History and a specialist on British imperial rule in the twentieth century. She is co-editor of the Sir Earle Page’s British War Cabinet Diary, 1941-42 (2021), as part of the Society’s Camden Series.
  • 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.

 

 

RHS Annual Newsletter, 2023

Our latest print Newsletter (November 2023) is available by clicking ‘Open’ or clicking on the cover. Copies of the November 2023 Newsletter may also be downloaded as a pdf. For the best experience, please view pdf downloads in Adobe Acrobat Reader, version 5 or above.

Copies of RHS Newsletters, 2010-2022

Published since 2010, copies of previous RHS Newsletters are available here.

Other ways to keep in touch

The Society also sends out a weekly News Circular to all Fellows and Members (this example dated 23 November 2023) informing them of current and forthcoming news and events, which are also featured on this website. You can also follow updates via RHS News and social media @RoyalHistSoc.

 

 

Publication of Trustees’ Annual Report and RHS Annual Newsletter

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the availability of its 2023 Annual Newsletter and the Trustees Annual Report and Audited Financial Statements, covering the activities of the Society between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023. Both were published in the week of the Society’s AGM, held at Mary Ward House, London, on Friday 24 November.

The Trustees Annual Report provides a review of the activities of the Society in its most recent full financial year, together with plans for future work by the Society, and the financial statements to 30 June 2023.

Print copies of the Society’s Annual Newsletter (dated November 2023) have now been sent to all Fellows and Members of the Society in the UK and overseas.

This year’s Newsletter includes the annual President’s Letter; articles on RHS Education and Research Policy from the Society’s newly appointed Secretaries for Education and Research Policy, Adam Budd and Barbara Bombi; a guide to the Society’s new Members Directory which will launch in early 2024; introductions to the research of this year’s RHS Centenary and Marshall Fellows; and a reflection on the work of our friend and colleague, the historian Arthur Burns (1963-2023).


Other ways to keep in touch: in addition to the Trustees Annual Report and Annual Newsletter, the Society sends out a weekly News Circular to all Fellows and Members (this example dated 23 November 2023) informing them of current and forthcoming news and events, which are also featured on this website. You can also follow updates via RHS News, social media @RoyalHistSoc, and the blog, Historical Transactions.

 

‘Futures for the History Journal: Reflections & Projections’, 6 December 2022

Panel Discussion

17:00 GMT, Tuesday 6 December 2022, Online 

 

Speakers at the event

  • Dr Kate Smith (Co-editor, Transactions of the RHS / University of Birmingham)
  • Dr Harshan Kumarasingham (Co-editor, Transactions of the RHS / University of Edinburgh)
  • Professor Sarah Knott (Indiana University, and former Acting Editor of the American Historical Review)
  • Georgia Priestley (Publisher, History Journals, at Cambridge University Press)
  • Professor Karin Wulf (Director, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, USA)
  • Professor Emma Griffin (RHS President and University of East Anglia, chair)

 

Watch this event

 

About the event

November 2022 marks the 150th anniversary of publication of Volume One of the Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. Transactions is the longest-running English-language academic history journal, predating first publication of the English Historical Review (1886) and the American Historical Review (1895), among other titles.

November 2022 also sees important changes to the current Transactions. This year’s volume will come with a new design and paperback format. It’s also the first in 150 years to include external submissions not previously read to the Society; the first to be edited by historians who are not members of RHS Council; and the first to engage an editorial board.

This event is an opportunity to take stock at a time that’s both an anniversary and a new departure.

Journals have long been, and remain, central to the communication of historical research. As a publishing form, History journals have proved remarkably durable, with developments typically taking place within an established framework of article types and formats. At the same time, the very recent history of History (and other) journals points to quickening and more disruptive change — most notably in terms of online access and publishing models; but also with reference to innovations of form, tone and purpose.

In this panel, UK and US historians associated with leading journals (as editors, publishers, innovators, authors and readers) consider the extent, impact and possible outcomes of these recent changes. At an important time for Transactions, we’ll also explore how far journal publishing fits with current research and pedagogical priorities; and what innovations our panellists — and you — propose as ‘Futures for the History Journal’.

 

About the panellists

  • Kate Smith is Associate Professor of Eighteenth-Century History at the University of Birmingham. In January 2022 she was appointed co-editor of Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. With her co-editor Dr Harshan Kumarasingham, Kate is responsible for the journal’s creative development in terms of academic content and format. Kate’s publications include Material Goods, Moving Hands: Perceiving Production in England, 1700-1830 (2014) and The East India Company at Home (co-edited with Margot Finn, 2018). Her current project is a monograph provisionally entitled Losing Possession in the Long Eighteenth Century.
  • Harshan Kumarasingham is Senior Lecturer in British Politics at the University of Edinburgh. With Kate Smith, he is co-editor from 2022 of Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, and jointly responsible for this new phase in the journal’s contribution to scholarly debate. Harshan’s research interests include constitutional history and decolonisation. His publications include A Political Legacy of the British Empire. Power and the Parliamentary System in Post-Colonial India and Sri Lanka (2013) and the edited collections Viceregalism. The Crown as Head of State in Political Crises in the Postwar Commonwealth and Liberal Ideals and the Politics of Decolonisation (both 2020).
  • Professor Sarah Knott is Sally M. Reahard Professor of History at Indiana University. She has served as both Associate and Acting Editor of the American Historical Review, the American historical profession’s flagship journal. In 2013, she was elected to the Editorial Board of the UK’s journal Past & Present. Sarah’s most recent publications include Mother. An Unconventional History (Penguin, 2019) and Mothering’s Many Labours (a 2020 special issue of Past & Present, co-edited with Emma Griffin).
  • Georgia Priestley is Publisher, History Journals for Cambridge University Press, with responsibility for a wide range of titles, including Contemporary European History, Historical JournalJournal of Global Studies, Modern Intellectual History and Urban History.
  • Professor Karin Wulf is Beatrice and Julio Mario Santo Domingo Director and Librarian, John Carter Brown Library, and Professor of History at Brown University, Rhode Island. A historian of gender, family and politics in eighteenth-century British America, Karin’s forthcoming book is Lineage: Genealogy and the Power of Connection in Early America with Oxford University Press. Prior to joining Brown in 2021, Karin was Executive Directive of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, which includes the journal William & Mary Quarterly among its titles. Karin is well-known for her innovations in journal (and wider) publishing, and as a leading commentator on scholarly communications for historians through her regular contributions to The Scholarly Kitchen.
  • Professor Emma Griffin (chair) is President of the Royal Historical Society and Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia. A specialist in nineteenth-century economic and social history, Emma has extensive experience of journal publishing, having served as Editor for the journals History (2012-16) and Historical Journal (2017-21).

 

RHS Lecture and Events: Full Programme for 2022 >

 

RHS Prothero Lecture — Professor Rohan McWilliam, 6 July 2022

The Gaiety Girl and the Matinee Idol

Constructing Celebrity and Sexuality in the West End of London, 1880-1914

 

Professor Rohan McWilliam

(Anglia Ruskin University)

 

Wednesday 6 July 2022

5.00pm – Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, University College London, and online

Watch the video of this lecture

 

Abstract

In this lecture Professor McWilliam argues that in the later Victorian period the West End of London embodied the shock of the new. It became the world’s leading pleasure district and reshaped British culture in distinctive ways.

Between 1880 and 1914, the West End helped in particular to invent modern ideas not only of sexuality and stardom but glamour itself. New forms such as musical comedy at the Gaiety Theatre on the Strand and Daly’s on Leicester Square constructed images of what was fashionable and up-to-date.

The lecture ranges from music halls and theatres to different kinds of mass culture, including the poster and the picture postcard.

 

Speaker Biography

Rohan McWilliam is Professor of Modern British History at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and a former President of the British Association for Victorian Studies. He is at work on a history of the West End of London, the first volume of which was published in 2020: London’s West End: Creating the Pleasure District, 1800-1914 (Oxford University Press).

Rohan has published widely on the histories of  popular politics and popular culture, including his book The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Sensation (2007) and articles on topics ranging from Victorian melodrama to the Labour Party in the 1980s.

Rohan is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Victorian Culture and the London Journal as well as the board of the London Record Society.  He is also co-director of the Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University.

 

RHS Summer Party, 6 July 2022

Please join us after this year’s Prothero Lecture for the Society’s Summer Party, held in the North Cloisters, University College London, from 6.30pm.

This will be our first summer gathering since July 2019 and we look forward very much to welcoming RHS Fellows, members and all lecture attendees to this now restored feature in the Society’s calendar.

 

About the annual Prothero Lecture

The Royal Historical Society’s Prothero Lecture is the principal named lecture in the Society’s annual events programme.

First delivered in 1969, the Lecture is named for the historian and editor Sir George W. Prothero (1848-1922), Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh and RHS President, 1901-1905. This year’s lecture is given in the same week as the centenary of Prothero’s death (on 10 July 1922).

Previous Prothero Lecturers include: Samuel H. Beer, Joanna Bourke, Linda Colley, Stefan Collini, Natalie Zemon Davis, Olwen Hufton, Sujit Sivasundaram, Quentin Skinner and Keith Thomas. Article versions by these and other Prothero lecturers are available in the Society’s journal, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.

 

RHS Lecture and Events: Full Programme for 2022 >

 

HEADER IMAGE: Gaiety Theatre, postcard, 1903, detail, public domain; Summer party image: The Fête Champêtre, Dirck Hals, 1627, Rijksmuseum, public domain.

 

Apply for Associate Fellowship

Closing date for next application round:

Monday 25 March 2024

 

Associate Fellowship is a new membership category for the RHS, launched in November 2021. It recognises the contribution made by a wide range of historical researchers and advocates for History across many sectors. Some Associate Fellows are historians working in Higher Education who have not yet reached the extent of publications, or equivalent, required to join the full Fellowship. Others contribute to History through their work in sectors such as heritage and museums, libraries and archives, teaching, publishing and broadcasting, or through private research.

All Associate Fellows are welcome to apply for full Fellowship as their careers develop and contributions continue, and we warmly encourage this. 

November 2021 sees the introduction of two new membership categories: in addition to Associate Fellowship we now also offer Postgraduate Membership. These two options replace the previous category of Early Career Membership. Read more about these two new ways to belong to the Society. From August 2022 we are extending the benefits available to Associate Fellows of the Society.

To apply for the RHS Associate Fellowship please use the Society’s Applications Portal, and select your chosen membership category.

Benefits of Associate Fellowship

  • Print and online copies of the RHS academic journal, Transactions.
  • Online access to the current issue and entire searchable back archive of Transactions of the Royal Historical Society: the collection comprises 144 volumes and more than 2200 articles, published between the journal’s foundation in 1872 and the early 2020s.
  • Online access to all 380 volumes of the Society’s Camden Series of primary source material, including the latest titles published in 2021 and 2022. Since 1838, the Camden Series has made primary records available in accessible scholarly editions, compiled and introduced by specialist historians. The Series is especially strong in material relating to British history, including the British Empire and Britons’ influence overseas.
  • All other RHS publications offered at a substantial discount: includes the Bibliography of British and Irish History and  Camden Series volumes.
  • 30% discount on all academic books (print only) published by Cambridge University Press.
  • 30% discount on purchases of print copies of the Society’s New Historical Perspectives book series, offering monographs and essay collections, and produced in association with the Institute of Historical Research and University of London Press.
  • 30% discount on History titles published by Oxford University Press.
  • 20% discount on print subscription to History Today, Britain’s leading history magazine (£52 per annum, usually £65 full price). 20% discount on online subscription to the archive of History Today (£56 per annum, usually £70 full price).
  • Receipt of the weekly ‘RHS News Circular’ (this example, August 2023): regular update on RHS activities, plus listings of events / calls for papers from other UK historical societies and research networks.
  • Copies of RHS Newsletters and the Society’s annual reports.
  • Eligible for RHS training and career development events / workshops reserved for Fellows and members.
  • Eligible to apply for the Society’s Research Funding programmes available to historians at all career stages.
  • Access to RHS members’ events, including Early Career training​ programmes 
  • Access to the RHS Archive and Library collections, and  RHS Library rooms, at University College London (UCL).
  • Become part of a thriving international community of historians, of all kinds and from many backgrounds.
  • Help us support and advocate for the study and practice of history in its many forms. Society income also supports our grants programme for historians at the start of their careers.

 

 

Annual Subscription

From November 2021, annual subscription rates for Associate Fellows, payable on election, are: 

  • for Associate Fellows, UK-based: £45 pa
  • Associate Fellows, International: £55 pa
  • Associate Fellows, Hardship Rate: £10.00 pa (online access to Transactions only)

The RHS subscription year runs July to June with renewals due on 1 July of each year. 

The Associate Fellow Hardship Rate is available to unemployed and low income/wage members (self-defined) and includes unfunded/self-funded students.


How to Apply

Prior to making your application, please consult the FAQs relating to Associate Fellowship

To apply for the RHS Associate Fellowship please use the Society’s Applications Portal, and select your chosen membership category.

Applications to join the RHS are welcome through the year. Dates for applications in 2024 are as follows: 25 March 2024, 27 May 2024, 12 August 2024 and 14 October 2024.

Rejoining the Society as an Associate Fellow

If your Associate Fellowship has lapsed / has been cancelled, and you would like to re-join the Society, please contact our Membership department at membership@royalhistsoc.org in the first instance. We will be glad to assist you.


All applications are considered by our Membership Committee which meets five times a year. You can expect to hear the outcome approximately six weeks after the closing date for your application. Incomplete applications will be held on file until we have received all the necessary information.

All enquiries about applying for election to the Fellowship should be addressed to the RHS office: membership@royalhistsoc.org.

 

Apply for Fellowship

Closing date for next application round:

Monday 25 March 2024

 

Fellowships are awarded to those who have made an original contribution to historical scholarship, typically through the authorship of a book, a body of scholarly work similar in scale and impact to a book, the organisation of exhibitions and conferences, the editing of journals, and other works of diffusion and dissemination grounded in historical research.

Election is conducted by review and applications must be supported by someone who is already a Fellow. The Society is able to offer assistance for applicants who do not know an existing Fellow – please contact us for advice. Applications are welcome from historians working within or outside the UK.

From November 2021, the Society has also introduced a new category of Associate Fellowship for historians from a wide range of backgrounds who may not yet have reached the stage of full Fellowship. Applicants are encouraged to consider this option as it may be the correct category for you given your career stage. From August 2022 we are extending the benefits available to Fellows of the Society.

To apply for the RHS Fellowship please use the Society’s Applications Portal, and select your chosen membership category.


Benefits of Fellowship

  • Entitled to use the letters FRHistS after your name.
  • Print and online copies of the latest version of the RHS academic journal, Transactions.
  • Online access to the current issue and entire searchable back archive of Transactions of the Royal Historical Society: the collection comprises 144 volumes and more than 2200 articles, published between the journal’s foundation in 1872 and the early 2020s.
  • Online access to all 380 volumes of the Society’s Camden Series of primary source material, including the latest titles published in 2021 and 2022. Since 1838, the Camden Series has made primary records available in accessible scholarly editions, compiled and introduced by specialist historians. The Series is especially strong in material relating to British history, including the British Empire and Britons’ influence overseas.
  • All other RHS publications offered at a substantial discount: includes the Bibliography of British and Irish History, Camden Series volumes and New Historical Perspectives print volumes.
  • 30% discount on all academic books (print only) published by Cambridge University Press.
  • 30% discount on purchases of print copies of the Society’s New Historical Perspectives book series, offering monographs and essay collections, and produced in association with the Institute of Historical Research and University of London Press.
  • 30% discount on History titles published by Oxford University Press.
  • 20% discount on print subscription to History Today, Britain’s leading history magazine (£52 per annum, usually £65 full price). 20% discount on online subscription to the archive of History Today (£56 per annum, usually £70 full price).
  • Receipt of the weekly ‘RHS News Circular’ (this example August 2023): a regular update on RHS activities, plus listings of events / calls for papers from other UK historical societies and research networks.
  • Copies of RHS newsletters and the Society’s annual reports.
  • Eligible for RHS training and career development events / workshops reserved for Fellows and members.
  • Eligible to apply for the Society’s Research Funding programmes available to historians at all career stages.
  • Eligible to participate in the Society’s Annual General Meeting.
  • Eligible to vote in all RHS elections.
  • Eligible to stand for election to the RHS Council.
  • Access to the RHS Archive and Library collections, and RHS Library rooms, at University College London (UCL).
  • Eligible to join UCL Libraries as a library member.
  • Use of the Society’s Council Chamber at UCL for small group meetings (on application to the RHS office).
  • Become part of a thriving international community of historians, of all kinds and from many backgrounds.
  • Help us support and advocate for the study and practice of history in its many forms. Society income also supports our grants programme for historians at the start of their careers.

 

 

Annual Subscription

From November 2021, annual subscription rates for Fellows, payable on election, are: 

  • for Fellows, UK-based: £60 
  • Retired Fellows, UK-based: £40 
  • Fellows, International: £70
  • Retired Fellows, International: £50 

The RHS subscription year runs July to June with renewals due on 1 July of each year. 


How to Apply

Before applying for election to the Fellowship please read the Frequently Asked Questions and arrange for a current Fellow to act as your referee using the guidance supplied in the FAQs.

To apply for the RHS Fellowship please use the Society’s Applications Portal, and select your chosen membership category.

Applications to join the RHS are welcome through the year. Dates for applications in 2024 are as follows: 25 March 2024, 27 May 2024, 12 August 2024 and 14 October 2024.

Rejoining the Society as a Fellow

If your Fellowship has lapsed / has been cancelled, and you would like to re-join the Society, please contact our Membership department at membership@royalhistsoc.org in the first instance. We will be glad to assist you.


All applications are considered by our Membership Committee which meets five times a year. You can expect to hear the outcome approximately six weeks after the closing date for your application. Incomplete applications will be held on file until we have received all the necessary information.

All enquiries about applying for election to the Fellowship should be addressed to the RHS office: membership@royalhistsoc.org

 

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.

 

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