Lucy Noakes is Rab Butler Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex and a social and cultural historian of early to mid 20th-century Britain. Appointed President-Elect and a Member of the RHS Council in January 2024, Lucy will take up the Presidency of the Royal Historical Society in November 2024.

As a specialist in the history of modern Britain, Lucy researches the experience and memory of those who have lived through conflict, with a particular focus on the First and Second World Wars. Her recent monographs include Dying for the Nation. Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain (2020) and War and the British: Gender, Memory and National Identity 1939-1991 (revised edition 2023). Lucy’s work has made extensive use of the Mass Observation Archive, of which she is now a trustee.

Before joining the University of Essex in 2017, Lucy Noakes held academic posts at the universities of Southampton Solent, Portsmouth and Brighton.

 

John Law was, until his retirement, a Research Fellow in History at the University of Westminster. He was elected Treasurer of the Royal Historical Society in November 2023.

John joined the academic world later than is usual, completing his PhD when he was 54 years old. John’s work considers the experience of modernity in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. He is the author of several academic books. His latest, A World Away, was published by McGill Queen’s University Press in 2022, and examines the impact of holiday package tours on the people of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. John was a council member and trustee at the University of Sussex from 2011 to 2017.

Prior to academia, John was a partner at PwC and an executive at IBM. In these roles, he provided consulting advice to the world’s largest financial institutions. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant.

 

Barbara Bombi is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Kent. Her research interests cover ecclesiastical and religious history in the High Middle Ages (1200-1450). Barbara was elected RHS Secretary of Research and Chair of the Research Policy Committee in November 2023. In this role, Barbara oversees the Society’s work in speaking for historians on issues related to research and funding. Prior to this she served as an elected member of the RHS Council, 2019-23.

Barbara specialises in the medieval papacy and canon law, the Crusades of the early 13th century, and the history of the Military Orders. Her most recent monograph is Anglo-Papal Relations in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Study in Medieval Diplomacy (2019), published by Oxford University Press. Barbara was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2022.

 

Adam Budd is Senior Lecturer in Cultural History and Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh.

Adam’s research focuses on authorship and print culture during eighteenth century, and on the development of history as an academic discipline. Prior to being appointed Secretary for Education, Adam served as an elected member of the RHS Council, between 2018 and 2022. As Secretary for Education, Adam is responsible for the Society’s policy on higher education and support for teaching.

Adam co-authored the RHS Report on Race, Ethnicity and Equality (2018) and has been involved in developing merit-based funding initiatives for early-career researchers, in addition to chairing RHS scholarship awards and research prizes. He is active with the Higher Education Academy and has led numerous Widening Participation initiatives. His latest book is Circulating Enlightenment: The Career and Correspondence of Andrew Millar, 1725-68 (Oxford University Press, 2020).

 

Clare Griffiths is Head of History and Professor of Modern History in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University. In November 2023 she was appointed Vice President of the Royal Historical Society.

Prior to taking up her current position in Cardiff, she taught at the University of Sheffield, Wadham College, Oxford, and the University of Reading, and she has held visiting fellowships at the Huntington Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Museum of English Rural Life.

Clare’s research focuses on the political and cultural history of Britain in the twentieth century, with a particular interest in the history of the countryside, agriculture and landscape. She is the author of Labour and the Countryside: the Politics of Rural Britain, 1918-1939 (Oxford University Press, 2007) and co-editor of Class, Cultures and Politics (OUP 2011). Her published articles and essays include work on political debates in Britain during the Second World War, the commemoration and historical memory of early nineteenth-century radicalism, and many aspects of British farming and rural life. She has also written extensively for the Times Literary Supplement, particularly on visual art.

Clare was a member of the Society’s Council from 2018 to 2021, during which time she served on, and subsequently chaired the Research Support Committee.

 

Jane Winters is Professor of Digital History at the School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Jane has led or co-directed a range of digital humanities projects, including — most recently — Big UK Domain Data for the Arts and Humanities; Digging into Linked Parliamentary Metadata; Traces through Time: Prosopography in Practice across Big Data; The Thesaurus of British and Irish History as SKOS; and Born Digital Big Data and Approaches for History and the Humanities.

A former RHS Council member, Jane became Vice-President, Publications in 2020 with oversight of the Society’s print and online publications and the RHS’s contribution to debates on humanities publishing.