On Friday 1 May, the Council and staff of the Society visited historians and students from the University of Warwick and the surrounding region.
Our day visit combined a workshop with independent historians who undertake research without an institutional affiliation; a meeting of the Society’s Council; and a public lecture given by Professor Sasha Handley, a Warwick PhD graduate and now Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Manchester.
Our morning workshop with independent historians brought together 25 researchers, in person and online, to discuss the experience and challenges — as well as the positives — of teaching, researching and publishing. The meeting included historians from a range of backgrounds: among them early career researchers; those who have recently left higher education, both by choice or unwillingly; and others who have developed successful careers as authors and public speakers.
The discussion highlighted the particular needs of independent historians, the barriers to their work, and what organisations like the Royal Historical Society currently provide and how it might further support their practice. Importantly, the session also focused on the very many important, scholarly contributions made by independent historians to research, regional and public history, and popular appreciation of the past. Our thanks to members of the Independent Historians’ Working Group, based at the University of Warwick, for co-hosting this event with the Society and to all who took part. Thank you also to staff at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, for providing a tour for visiting historians later in the day.
Our evening lecture, with Professor Sasha Handley, took us to Epworth Rectory in Lincolnshire — home of the Wesley family, and later celebrated as the cradle of evangelical Methodism. Sasha’s lecture — ‘The Haunting at the Rectory: Ghost Stories and Women’s Lives in Early Modern England’ — explored family members’ accounts of a supernatural presence in the house during the winter of 1716-17. Central to these accounts were the Wesley daughters whose reports of a ghost reveal the rectory to have been a place of longstanding family divisions and deprivation and trauma, but also serve as acts of resilience and strategic protest. Video and audio recording’s of the lecture are now available.
Many thanks to Sasha for her excellent lecture, and to all who joined us, at Warwick and online, for this event and the reception with members of the RHS Council which followed.
Forthcoming visits and lectures by the Society
On Wednesday 13 May, members of the RHS Council visit historians at Aberystwyth University and the National Library of Wales for meetings with historians from these institutions and the wider region.
We will be discussing the teaching of Welsh history and the provision of history in Welsh higher education, along with sessions on oral history, AI and history teaching, and the role of the Society in supporting historians at this time.
The visit close with our next public lecture, by Professor Miri Rubin (QMUL) on ‘Black/Beautiful: Meanings of Blackness in a Biblical Verse’. This lecture, which starts at 6.00pm, is open to all. Further details and booking for this event is available here. Those unable to attend in-person may book to watch the lecture online.