Professor Emma Griffin: Introducing the next President-Elect
The Royal Historical Society will formally announce the appointment of our new President-Elect at its AGM this evening. We asked Emma Griffin, Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia to introduce herself, her research and her reasons for taking on this role.
Historians, wildlife, and habitats
Why do we study the past? One reason is to understand the present, and how the things we think of as ‘normal’ developed out of very different pasts. At a time of mounting concern about the state of the environment, Tom Williamson argues that understanding the historical nature of nature is of critical importance.
Co-production, Crowd-sourcing & the History of Railway Casualties
The Railway Work, Life & Death project has been using crowd-sourcing and working with volunteers to co-produce research questions and topics. In this post for the RHS, the project team of Karen Baker, Mike Esbester and Helen Ford share a great example of how large numbers of people can collaborate on an historical topic which might appear on the surface to be quite niche: accidents involving British and Irish railway workers.
Historians and Sustainability
How can historians respond to the demands of a career that can be both environmentally – and emotionally – unsustainable? In this post for the RHS, Toby Green and Simon Sleight introduce their working paper on “Historians and Sustainability”.
Bloody Bunce: A Legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in Sierra Leone
Four hundred years ago, in 1619, the first African slaves landed in the United States. The 1619 Project has made an important contribution to our understanding of the legacy of slavery in the United States, but there has been less conversation about the places where the slaves were taken from. In this post for the RHS Historical Transactions blog, Joseph Kaifala, founder of the Jeneba Project and co-founder of the Sierra Leone Memory Project, contributes a personal piece from Bunce island.
The RHS Race, Ethnicity and Equality Report: One Year On
It has been a year since the publication of the RHS’s Race, Ethnicity & Equality in UK History: A Report and Resource for Change (2018). In this post, Shahmima Akhtar, Past and Present Fellow, reflects on the work that has been done in this area, and our hopes for the future.
Getting Heads Together: Reflections on the first RHS History HoDs Meeting
What’s it like to head up a History department? What challenges and opportunities do History HoDs face, and what’s the best way of responding to them? In May 2019, over 20 Heads of UK History departments gathered under the auspices of the RHS to compare notes, share good practice and brainstorm tricky issues. In this post, Professor Abigail Woods, Head of the Department of History at KCL, and organiser of the first meeting, reflects on the discussions.
Plan S and History Journals
Are History journals ready for Plan S? What are the implications for historians of cOAlition S’s mandate that all research they fund be published according to Plan S open access requirements?
Cataloguing the RHS Archive 2: The Quest for the 1583 High Commission
The Royal Historical Society is currently revamping its archive and updating its accompanying catalogue, a project that includes the digitisation of the academic and personal papers of George Walter Prothero, the first RHS President. In their second blog post on the project, our researchers Eilish Gregory and Imogen Evans examine how the papers make apparent Prothero’s methods as a historian.
RHS Update – Autumn 2019
It’s been a busy few months at the RHS. As we put the summer behind us, here is an update on the projects that we are working on at the moment, and how you can get involved with our work.
Teaching History in a Digital Age
Digital transformations in society and culture have fundamentally changed the historian’s relationship with the past. So how do we incorporate this into our teaching? In this post for Historical Transactions, Dr Sharon Webb and Dr James Baker, winners of the 2019 RHS Prize for Innovation in Teaching discuss their approach to teaching digital history.
The Economist and History: Economical with the Facts?
On 25 July 2019, Professor Jo Fox, IHR Director, and Professor Margot Finn, RHS President, sent the following letter to The Economist. It drew attention to both the factual errors and the problematic interpretation of a ‘Bagehot’ column published on 18 July 2019. This column significantly misrepresented undergraduate student numbers in History over the past decade. We are surprised that neither our initial letter to The Economist nor our follow up emails have received the courtesy of a reply. Here we print in full our original letter of 25 July.
