Early Career Research Support Grants provide funds to early career historians (historians who are within 5 years of submitting their PhD in a historical subject) to undertake research. Applicants must also be members of the Royal Historical Society.

Activities supported include: visiting an archive or historic site, or conducting interviews. This grant cannot be used to support attendance at, or production of a conference.

Please note that within your application you will be asked to provide information on any current employment (if applicable) and access to related or other research funding support. This information will be reviewed by the RHS Research Support Committee and may be used in prioritising applications for funding support, however access to other sources of funding will not alone invalidate your application. You will also be asked to supply an academic reference.

In 2024, grants of either £500 or £1000 per grant (based on the research activity to be undertaken) will be awarded by the Society. Closing dates for applications in 2024 are as follows:

• Friday 7 June 2024 
• Friday 6 December 2024

Applications for Early Career Research Support Grants are invited via the Society’s applications portal.

Further notes on eligibility:

• Early Career Research Support Grants are reserved for those who are members of the Royal Historical Society. To join the Society, please see here.
• Funding is reserved for research projects that are both clearly and predominantly historical in orientation, with a specific chronological remit.
• Applicants who have previously been awarded an ‘Early Career Research Support Grant’ will not be eligible for further funding under this scheme.
• Applications for funding for research taking place within 4 weeks of the application deadline will not be considered.
• Applications for retroactive research visits/activities will not be considered.

All applications for the Early Career Research Support Grants are reviewed by the RHS Research Support Committee, formed of members of the Society’s Council. Review of applications will not take place until the deadline for submission has passed. An average timeline for review, ratification and notification of the outcome of an application is around six weeks after the deadline.

Please note that all applications, successful or otherwise, will be directly notified of their outcome.

Current holders of Early Career Research Support Grants, 2024

• Thomas Burnham – awarded February 2024
• Nicolò Ferrari – awarded February 2024
• Yui Chim Lo – awarded February 2024
• Mariana Zegianini – awarded February 2024

HEADER IMAGE: Henry Heide Confectionary Co.- Seven Buildings Occupied by the Business, after 1882, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, public domain.

The Royal Historical Society awards prizes each year to recognise outstanding historical scholarship and achievement. A listing of all prizes, and current deadlines for 2023-24, is available below. Applications for the 2024 prize round opened on 1 September and close on 31 December 2023.

Prizes 2023: Winners

Winners of the 2023 RHS Prizes were announced on 6 July 2023. A full list of recipients is available here.

Prizes, 2024: Timetable

• Gladstone Book Prize. An annual Prize of £1,000 for a work of history on a topic not primarily related to British history that is the author’s first sole book publication. Submissions are accepted from publishers only. Applications for the 2024 Gladstone Prize open from 1 September to 31 December 2023.
• Whitfield Book Prize. An annual Prize of £1,000 for a work on British or Irish history that is the author’s first sole book publication. Submissions are accepted from publishers only. Applications for the 2024 Whitfield Prize open from 1 September to 31 December 2023
• Alexander Prize. An annual Prize of £250 for an essay or article based on original historical research, by a doctoral candidate or those recently awarded their doctorate, published in a journal or an edited collection of essays. Submissions are accepted from authors. Applications for the 2024 Alexander Prize open from 1 September to 31 December 2023.

General enquiries about Society’s Prizes should be sent to: administration@royalhistsoc.org

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 with the Institute of Historical Research in late 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