Preparing for REF 2029
Historians working in UK Higher Education will be very familiar with the ‘REF’ or Research Excellence Framework. Work is now underway for ‘REF 2029’, led by a team reporting to the four UK Higher Education funding bodies. With it come a number of changes to the means and structure of assessment. As a result, the next REF will differ in important ways from that held in 2021. In this post Barbara Bombi and Jonathan Morris – current and former chairs of the Society’s Research Policy Committee – outline those areas of REF 2029 design currently open to review, and summarise the RHS response to a major consultation of REF design which closed in October.
WEB ACCESS TO BRITISH LIBRARY DATABASES: WORKAROUNDS for historians
On 28 October 2023, the British Library was subject to a major cyberattack, entailing a near complete shutdown of the Library’s web-based services. Staff at the British Library are continuing to work extremely hard to restore services. As this continues, a number of organisations are offering guidance on short-term alternatives and workarounds while BL databases remain unavailable for research or teaching across the UK and overseas. This post provides a summary of these alternatives and a selection of guides now available, with a special focus on those working historically. We also invite further proposals for alternative resources to add to this listing.
Beyond the ‘good’/’bad’ migrant dichotomy: ways forward for early modern and contemporary history
RHS Workshop Grants support meetings of historians to undertake a wide range of projects, from research, to debate, programme planning and networking. The first round of RHS Workshops took place in 2023. They include a day event recently hosted by the Early Modern Migration Reading Group on the subject of ‘Beyond the “Good”/”Bad” Migrant Dichotomy: Ways Forward for Early Modern and Contemporary History’. In this post, the organisers of this Workshop — Kathleen Commons, Dan Rafiqi, Juliet Atkinson, and Samantha Sint Nicolaas — reflect on their project.
This resource provides links to external, publicly accessible data and providers with information on the present state of the historical discipline and profession in UK higher education. The Royal Historical Society updates this page as new data is released. Many of the external providers also offer data for previous years, enabling the mapping of trends for at least the past decade. In each case, the Society is not responsible for the quality or comprehensiveness of data provided by these external providers. In addition to the selected information below, we hope this page provides links and context for others to search these results for themselves.
Waiting to die? Old age in the late Imperial Russian village
What was daily life like for old people in Russian villages at the turn of the twentieth century? In this post, Sarah Badcock (University of Nottingham) considers the lives of non-able elderly people in late Imperial Russia; drawing on accounts of real lives and representations of old age in art and literature. This post introduces and accompanies Sarah’s research article, ‘Waiting to Die? Old Age in the Late Imperial Russian Village’, which was recently published Open Access on FirstView for ‘Transactions of the Royal Historical Society’.
STATUES, SURREALISM AND PUBLIC SPACE
The purpose of statues in public spaces has recently become a matter of controversy. In this post, Pippa Catterall considers how and when a statue may be read as appropriately situated in public space, and when and how it is not. Appropriateness is primarily determined by the ways in which public authorities authorise the use of public space. Yet understanding of the fit between a statue and public space varies over time, and may be deliberately subverted. This placing of statues in ‘a state of surrealism’ also goes beyond relocation.
Student numbers for History A-Levels and Scottish Highers, 2023
The 2023 A-Level results, for students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, were released on 17 August 2023. They follow the 2023 results for Scottish Highers, published on 8 August. Both sets of data allow for observations on the uptake and relative popularity of History, and of arts and humanities subjects more generally, in 2022-23. This post draws on figures published in August by the Joint Council for Qualifications (for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, JCQ) and the Scottish Qualifications Authority SQA).
Gendering Violence in the Past
In her new article, now published in ‘Transactions of the Royal Historical Society’, Dr Victoria Leonard analyses the letters of St Augustine of Hippo, and demonstrates how their ‘silences’ convey the erasure of gendered violence and queer sexuality in antiquity. Here, Victoria draws on her research to demonstrate how an absence of primary source evidence can be just as informative as an abundance; and how historians can use these silences to gain deeper insight into the past. Victoria’s Open Access article, ‘Gendered Violence, Victim Credibility and Adjudicating Justice in Augustine’s Letters’, is now available – Open Access – via the FirstView section of the journal’s website.
The Impulse of the Present
In this third and final post in our ‘History and Human Flourishing’ series, David Armitage considers longstanding debates, and new writing, on the value of presentist thinking for historical debate. For many – past and present – presentism serves to deflect and distort from the historian’s true purpose and the distinctiveness of the discipline. Here David draws on recent work by historians of science, as well as by psychologists and philosophers, to advocate for the advantages of presentist thinking. Far from distortion or deflection, history informed by presentism offers greater possibilities for dialogue with multiple publics and greater humility on the part of practitioners and readers.
The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489-1541)
In this post Helen Newsome-Chandler introduces her new volume in the Society’s Camden Series, ‘The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489-1541)’, published in August 2025. This volume presents the surviving holograph correspondence of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots as a stand-alone edition for the first time. The 111 holograph letters and 4 ‘hybrid’ letters form an unprecedented epistolary archive, featuring the largest collection of holograph correspondence written in English or Scots of any medieval or early modern queen. The letters chart Margaret’s life as a late medieval queen, including the challenges she faced in negotiating her dual identity as queen of Scots and an English princess, and her important role in Anglo-Scots politics and diplomacy in the early sixteenth century. To mark publication of this important volume, the Introduction and full text of The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489-1541) are now available, free to read, via Cambridge University Press, until [add date].
Flourishing with Herodotus
In this second post of the ‘History and Human Flourishing’ series, Suzanne Marchand explores the contemporary value and relevance of Herodotus in historical teaching and methodology. Though often overlooked in favour of a ‘scientific’ approach advocated by nineteenth-century acolytes of Thucydides, Herodotus and his Histories remain a rich — and much needed — guide to history as the story and study of human behaviours. In this post, Suzanne considers Herodotus’ appeal and lessons for historians today. This post is the second essay in the Society’s 3-part ‘History & Human Flourishing’ blog series. The first, by Darrin M. McMahon, explores the often-neglected study of the history of human happiness.
History and Human Flourishing
How might history and historians enhance human flourishing, if at all? In this post – the first of three considering ‘History and Human Flourishing’ – Darrin McMahon considers the historical study of happiness as an approach to the past. Histories of happiness are more than the pursuit of perpetual good feelings and they exist alongside the ubiquitous suffering of the world, in the past and the present alike. As editor of a new volume, ‘History and Human Flourishing’ (2023), Darrin proposes important questions for a discipline about which some are sceptical: to consider how the study of history can promote happiness and wellbeing in the present, and the value of history for life, that is, for human flourishing.
