New Historical Perspectives

 

 

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, and supported by a subvention from the Economic History Society.

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 titles in the series

Reading, Gender and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England, by Hannah Jeans (published in April 2025)

This ambitious and interdisciplinary book redraws the history of early modern Englishwomen’s reading, exploring the connections between gender, reading habits and genre throughout the seventeenth century. It challenges historiographical narratives about reading that have privileged male experience, and highlights the multiplicity and complexity of women’s reading practices, focusing on the ways in which they used reading in constructing their gender identity.

Drawing on archival sources across a wide range of writing types, Hannah Jeans offers a more complete picture of women’s reading experiences, ultimately questioning the accepted notion of ‘the woman reader’ itself.

 

Voice, Silence and Gender in South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid Struggle. The Shadow of a Young Woman, by Rachel E. Johnson (published in March 2025).

This new monograph offers an unconventional biography of Mary Masabata Loate: a young woman as a shadow within the story of South Africa’s anti-apartheid liberation struggle.

Between 1976 and 1986, Masabata Loate appears in court records and newspaper articles as a school student activist, a beauty queen, a terrorism suspect, a political prisoner and finally a murder victim.

While lacking lacked the materials to write a conventional life, this volume recreates ‘a shadow biography’ of Masabata Loate.

 

 

Adulthood in Britain and the United States from 1350 to Generation Z, edited by Maria Cannon and Laura Tisdall (published in November 2024).

This volume explores how concepts of adulthood have changed over time. Adulthood has a history, just as other age-categories such as childhood, adolescence and old age have been shaped by cultural and social contexts.

Collectively, the authors explore four key ideas: adulthood as both burden and benefit; adulthood as a relational category; collective versus individual definitions of adulthood; and adulthood as a static definition.

 

 

Mapping the State. English Boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act, by Martin Spychal (published in 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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Recent titles in the Series

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.

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. Applications are invited from authors, within 10 years of completing their PhD from a UK or Irish university and who are looking to publish their first book.

Books proposed should be no longer than 100,000 words – and this word count does include references. Completed proposal forms should be submitted to the University of London Press Publisher, Dr Emma Gallon: emma.gallon@sas.ac.uk.

As NHP authors are publishing their first book, our editorial mentoring and Author Workshops are designed to help with the transition from PhD to monograph.

What do we prioritise and publish in the Open-Access New Historical Perspectives series?

The NHP series invites book proposals from all first-time authors, making the publishing transition from a PhD thesis to a first monograph.

The series is open to everyone who has obtained a doctorate at a Higher Education institution in the UK or Ireland with an historical focus in the last 10 years (2015 onwards). For those that took a career-break, we will take your specific circumstances into consideration and treat them confidentially.

We are not restrictive on period, geographic area, or field of historical study. Nor do we expect first-time authors to have a current job in university life.

We only ask that you are writing your first monograph following your doctoral study.

This might be a fully revised version of your PhD thesis, or a first book developing from a specific area of your doctoral research.

Our NHP editorial team aims to support this important first-step in people’s publishing careers.

Some Frequently Asked Questions to get Started

Do we publish edited volumes?
  • From time-to-time the series does support edited volumes by those at an early career stage.
  • We encourage those assembling the authors to approach the Series Co-Editors informally via email (see contact details below).
  • It saves time to have an initial discussion about career stage(s) and the scope of the proposal.
What about if I have held a Post-Doctoral or Research Assistant position?
  • If you have worked for another person, either in a post-doctoral role or as their research assistant on a grant team, we do make allowance for this.
  • You might not be new to publishing because you had to collaboratively publish research findings from a particular funded project, in journal articles, an edited volume, or a book.
  • We can support the publishing of your own PhD work. Please contact us informally by email to talk through your single-authored monograph plans.
How much of the thesis should I have previously published?
  • We prefer early career authors to have published no more than two chapters of their thesis elsewhere before approaching us. This is for two important publishing reasons.
  • It ensures your monograph makes a new contribution to current debates in your field of study.
  • It avoids overlap and represents the very best of your pioneering voice on publication day.

2025 – Call for Global Histories

In 2025 we are welcoming book proposals from those that work on areas of the world that have been under-researched in the past and represent more people’s lived experiences in the global community. Do get in touch informally if you think this might be you.

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).