A Seven-Year-Old Monster
The Many-Headed Monster is one of the longest-running and most successful of academic historical blogs. It was founded, and is still run, by Dr Laura Sangha (Exeter), Dr Brodie Waddell (Birkbeck), Dr Jonathan Willis (Birmingham) and Dr Mark Hailwood (Bristol), four early-modern historians who met while studying postgraduate degrees at the University of Warwick in the mid-2000s. To mark the Monster’s seventh birthday, we asked the team to reflect on their motivation, the editorial challenges and, most importantly, the secret of the blog’s continued success…
Charting a Course: From Shock Cities to Sexy Sailors (and Pilgrim Fathers)
Tom Hulme is author of After the Shock City: Urban Culture and the Making of Modern Citizenship, available now in the RHS Studies on History Series with Boydell and Brewer. In this post for the Historical Transactions blog, he considers how the threads from that project continue to weave through two very different new historical ventures.
Cataloguing the RHS Archive, 1: George Prothero’s Papers
As part of the Society’s 150th anniversary celebrations, the RHS has embarked on a project to revamp its archive and update its accompanying catalogue, in order to improve the accessibility of the collections and to increase awareness of Society’s past. The project is funded by the Marc Fitch Fund, a charity which supports projects aimed at preserving and showcasing important pieces of historical scholarship across the UK and the Republic of Ireland. With this generous award, the Society has been able to hire two post-graduate researchers, Eilish Gregory and Imogen Evans, to help complete the project. In this post for Historical Transactions, Eilish and Imogen introduce the project, and reveal some of their early finds in the papers of George Prothero, the Society’s first President.
RHS LGBT+ Survey 2019
The Royal Historical Society Working Group on LGBT+ histories and historians has launched its survey of the profession.
A Historian and his Times: Sushil Chaudhury and the History of Eighteenth-Century Bengal
Professor Sushil Chaudhury, historian of eighteenth-century Bengal, and General President Elect of the Indian History Congress, died earlier this year. In this piece for the RHS blog, Professor Peter J. Marshall places his friend’s work in the context of his life, and reflects on how historical scholarship about the region has changed.
An Update from the RHS LGBT+ Working Group
The RHS values the diversity of the historical community in all its forms and over the past several years has invested serious resources in projects that promote equality and inclusion. We believe that valuing diversity means listening to the voices, and respecting the experiences, of people whose lives and identities may be different to our own. This includes trans and non-binary people.
Writing a History Textbook: Seven Things I’ve Learnt
Matthew McCormack has recently finished writing Citizenship and Gender in Britain, 1688-1928. A textbook aimed at the student market, it will be published by Routledge in June 2019. In this post for Historical Transactions, Matthew shares how the process differed from his other academic publications, and the things he learned along the way.
Reflections on “Contested Commemorations”, RHS Symposium at the Open University.
On 17 May 2019 the Open University History department hosted a Royal Historical Society symposium to reflect on the centenary of the First World War. Following four years of commemorative activity, our aim with “Contested Commemorations” was to assess how a range of countries and regions had marked the centenary. Vincent Trott reports on a day of fascinating presentations and lively discussion.
De Montfort University Launches Stephen Lawrence Research Centre
On 22 April 2019 the nation officially acknowledged the first annual Stephen Lawrence Day. The day served as a day of remembrance, reflection and educational impact concerning the life and legacy of Stephen Lawrence, a Black teenager murdered in a racist attack in 1993 while awaiting a bus in Eltham, South London. Here, Dr Kennetta Hammond Perry explains the significance of the Lawrence family’s work, and introduces the new Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester, opened officially by Baroness Doreen Lawrence on 9 May 2019.
RHS Responds to Plan S Revised Guidance
In response to updated guidance from cOAlition S on Plan S, we provide History researchers, editors and learned societies with essential information on the revised criteria.
Cultures of secrecy and transparent archives?
In April 2019, during a panel discussion at Australia’s Parliament House, Anne Twomey, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Sydney, declared that the National Archives of Australia (NAA) have become ‘completely dysfunctional’. This was due to failures in procedures for sensitivity reviewing government files in order to provide access. Twomey argued that this was symptomatic of a ‘culture of secrecy’ which was ‘a serious problem when it comes to transparency in government’. In this post, Richard Dunley argues that this developing culture of secrecy is, paradoxically, a direct product of drives for transparency.
In All Our Footsteps: Tracking Walking Histories in Post-War Britain
May is National Walking Month. In this piece, Clare Hickman and Glen O’ Hara reflect on their new collaborative project which has emerged from personal as well as academic interests in walking, and has led them to reflect on the intersections of environmental, political and health histories.
